E 168 
.W52 





A. L. Westgard 

Field Representatwe, American Automobile Association, 

Vice-President and Director Transcontinental Highivays, 

National Highivays Association 



TALES 

OF A 

PATHFINDER 



BY 
A. L. WESTGARD 



PRICE ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF 



Published By 

A. L. WESTGARD 

501 Fifth Ave. New York 






copvrr;ht I'ljo 

BY A. L. WESTGARD 
P:,b!isli,;l, Manii 1<)20 



MAY i 3 1920 



PRESS OF 

ANDREW B. GRAHAM CO. 

WASMINeTON. D. C- 



©CI.A565915 



r 



To my luifc, wJio has shared ivith me the 
hardships as ivell as the pleasures of the trail, 
ever a cheerful comrade and a trusty ad-riser. 



Foreword 

THE story of the highways Is the story of 
mankind, whether In a state of barbarism or 
of civilization. The movement of primitive 
peoples has been by waterways and land-routes 
which, following lines of least resistance, often 
appropriated the trails made by wild animals. 
The movements of civilized men likewise followed 
the least resistive lines with the result that the great 
railways and the National highways coincide with 
the game-trails and the Indian paths of long ago. 

The ascent of man has been in direct ratio to the 
progress that has been made In the speed, safety, 
comfort and convenience of the movement of men 
and goods from one place to another. 

The wheel is the emblem of human progress. 
The supreme evolution of the wheel is the auto- 
mobile. 

Already six and a half million automobiles are 
daily employed In speeding a third of the population 
of the United States along their way with the 
demand increasing so rapidly that the factories are 
unable to meet It. 

Every Intelligent citizen in the United States 
knows that the next big job for America now that 
the war Is over is to construct road beds as perfectly 
adapted to the economic operation thereon of motor 
vehicles as the road bed of the railway is adapted 
to the use thereon of its rolling stock. The two 
and a half million miles of roads in the United 
States will be made modern highways as rapidly as 



the work can be financed and the men and material 
secured for the purpose. The strength of the 
States and the counties will be put forth in increas- 
ing measure until this result is secured. The 
Federal Government has already placed the zero 
milestone in Washington to designate the point 
from which a system of National highways will 
extend clear to the surf-beat of the Pacific and from 
lands of snow to lands of sun. The Federal 
Government, the States and the Counties are 
working out a system of National, State and County 
highways, the most important of which will be the 
first improved. The creation of such a system of 
highways will do more for the welfare and advance- 
ment of the people of the United States, more for 
the unity, security, development and glory of the 
Nation than could possibly be accomplished by a 
like expenditure of money and energ}^ in any other 
line of endeavor. 

If this be true, what is the measure of the debt 
of gratitude which the public owes to the apostles 
of better roads and to the men who have pioneered 
the ways that are now to become the great 
National Thoroughfares. Among the latter, chief 
indeed of the Pathfinders, is the author of this 
volume, A. L. Westgard. The year 1903 saw him 
driving his first car on the roads of New York. 
Since then he has been the constant explorer of the 
ways that lead from east to west, from north to 
south, inspecting, mapping, publishing, making men 
know and appreciate what a country this is; urging 
the delights of the open road and the life of the 
great out doors. Almost all of the more than forty 
great highways along lines of latitude and longi- 
tude follow the trail of his pathfinding car — or 
cars — for he has worn out eighteen cars in this 



work. His services in this interest have made him 
a benefactor of humanity. 

If, as I believe, the most important fact for 
Americans is America, the main part in the educa- 
tion of an American citizen is to know America. 
This book is a direct contribution to this end. 

Dr. S. M. Johnson. 
March, 1920. 
Roswell, New Mexico, 
and Washington, D. C. 



By Way of Explanation 

THE days of the pathfinder of motor-car 
routes are about over. With few exceptions 
the routes that may become trunk-line high- 
ways are already beaten paths of known quality 
and future work in connection with routes will 
concentrate on improving surface conditions. 

It has been contended that the pathfinder's work 
of the past has been an important factor in the 
development of the good roads movement and 
consequently of the automobile and allied indus- 
tries, and it is in response to frequent urgings of 
my many friends within these industries that this 
book was written. 

The illustrations are mostly intended to show the 
difficulties encountered in motor-car pathfinding of 
the past, before the advent in any considerable 
measure of the Good Roads movement, largely 
founded on the pathfinder's work. 

A. L. Westgard. 



PAGIi 
13 

The Desert Tramp 

21 

The Cow and the Route Book 

26 

A Modern Noah's Ark 

33 

... 37 



Chapters 

The Trundle Wheei 

The Desei 

Optimism 

The Cow 

Marooned 

A Modern 

No Gasoline— And Yet 

Frenchman's Station 

41 
Faculty of Orientation 

46 
Yuma Border 

47 
A Morman Dance 

48 
A Mexican Wedding 

49 
The Yuma Mummy 

Notorious 

The Padre's Prophesy 

57 
Pesky Pests 

Good Fellows 

... 64 
Saladito 

Price Canyon 

Pan, My Pal ^^ 

79 
Close Connection 

09 
Deadly Figures 

R4 
The Black River Crossing 

89 
TusT Frogs 

91 
Diamondbacks 

The Top of the Cascades ^^ 

In the Bighorns 

Photographing the Red Man 106 

Americans All 

11 



PAGE 

Some "Hotels" 118 

Lost — But Recovered 122 

The Un-Named Pass 124 

Our National Parks 128 

The Forage Stations 133 

Forest Fires 137 

A Close Call 141 

Indian Slough 145 

The Gospel and Good Roads 150 

Kicking Up the Dust of Ages 153 

Sectional Rivalry 159 

Out West 166 

Convict Labor 169 

At the Grand Canyon 173 

Hazing the Lord 175 

Colorado Mutton 177 

The Queen of the Desert 178 

Queen Victoria 181 

Tickling the Carburetor 182 

'Ware Handshaking 183 

Prospectors 184 

Sharp Shooting 187 

A Town's Disgrace 189 

Gates 192 

Historic Markers 195 

Gentlemen of the Press 197 

Bad Intentions 199 

The Sandstorm 201 

Sniping Gringoes 204 

The Padre Typographers 206 

Texas The Great 208 

A Tight Squeeze 212 

Appendix 215 

12 



The Trundle Wheel 

WHEN I was a young man, I was employed 
by a publishing house engaged in issuing 
State, county and city atlases and maps 
all over the United States. In the county atlases 
the maps covered towns or townships and villages. 
The property dimensions along country roads, espe- 
cially in the Eastern States, where the section system 
of dividing land into units of a mile square did not 
prevail, were obtained by the use of the so-called 
trundle wheel. This consisted of a large, very light 
wooden wheel, with two long handles reaching from 
the hub, and by the means of these the contrivance 
was pushed along country roads. The diameter of 
the wheel was about five feet. The revolutions of 
the wheel were measured on an odometer at the 
hub, and the circumference in feet multiplied by the 
number of revolutions of the wheel would give the 
distance covered between points. On the handles 
was fastened a plane-table with compass attached, 
to get the proper bearings of the road at bends and 
turns. 

While the trundle wheel may seem a crude con- 
trivance it worked with great accuracy, but it was 
no lazy man's job to push it along from twenty to 
thirty miles a day and work out the bearings, mark 
the property lines, their lengths and courses, as well 
as the location of the houses along the road, on the 
map on the plane-table, besides stopping to get the 
name of the owner of each property. I have cov- 
ered thousands of miles footing it along country 
roads in this manner and this was my initiation into 

13 



14 



THE TRUNDLE WHEEL 



pathfinding work. The wide scope of the work also 
gave me a rather intimate knowledge of roads and 
soil conditions in many widely separated sections of 
the country. This knowledge was further amplified 
upon the arrival of the pneumatic-tired bicycle, 
which, as the railroads did to the canals, superseded 
the trundle wheel and relegated it to a historic past. 
Then followed the automobile. While in the 
early days of motordom as much time was probably 
spent under the car tinkering as in the driver's seat, 
the trundle wheel in comparison to the modern 
automobile is as the prehistoric ruins in our South- 




The io'vjcring red sandstone rocks in Glen Eyrie, near 
Colorado Springs, Colo., assume many grotesque sliapes, 
as the central pinnacle in this picture, ^-hich is appro- 
priately called "The Judge" 



west compared to modern city skyscrapers. From 
the trundle wheel to the bicycle and to the auto- 
mobile I used progressively the means at hand and 
seem to have grown into pathfinding work. It has 



'Jill' TRUNDLE WHEEL 15 

been very interesting work too. The preparation 
of dependable route maps all over the United States 
has in no small measure helped in their development 
and the desire to travel over them. The main 
routes have by reason of their known quality as first 
learned through the medium of the pathfinder's 
work become the standardized routes of today. The 
travel induced over certain main lines, as a conse- 
quence of the work of the pioneer pathfinder, has 
in turn caused improvements running into the hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars, to be followed by bil- 
lions of more dollars as time rolls on. The path- 
finder's work, beginning with the trundle wheel, 
will thus be seen to have been the very foundation 
stone, the very first beginning of the good-roads 
movement which now has taken such an impetus 
tliat unquestionably a system of nationally built 
and maintained highways will be constructed as a 




M/i/iy 0] these p'uiiirr.ujiw, idstelldted formations of sJiale 
and clay, border the main route in southern IVyoming 



16 THE TRUNDLE WHEEL 

framework for the thousands of miles of roads 
which will be built by states and counties to sup- 
plement them as feeders. 

I feel no small pride for having had the privilege 
and opportunity to help in the pioneer pathfinding 
work which has borne such magnificent fruit. 
While 1 am now counted the veteran of the guild 
I am as keenly as ever watching the development 
along all the main trunk lines of the country and 
doing my humble share in helping to keep up the 
interest in sections where lethargy may show too 
healthy signs. Incidentally 1 count the year lost 
that I cannot personally inspect the progress of 
work on at least two of the standard transconti- 
nental lines. Eighteen transcontinental trips and 
more than that many between the North and South 
boundaries of the United States on rubber tires are 
behind me and I am still going. 



The Desert Tramp 

WE LEFT Yuma one bright morning to in- 
spect the route up the Gila Valley, which 
is now distinguished beyond that of any 
other in the United States, because in spite of its 
desert character, it is an important link in four dis- 
tinct Transcontinental routes, viz. : the Dixie Over- 
land Highway, the Bankhead Highway, the South- 
ern National Highway and the Old Spanish Trail, 
besides figuring as a link in the Borderland Trail. 

However, at the time of our trip here concerned 
none of these promotions had been conceived and, 
as then there was no bridge across the Gila River 
at Antelope Hill, it was necessary to ferry or ford 
across the Gila at Dome Station and follow a rather 
uncertain desert trail via Castle Dome and Middle 
Well, joining the route as now laid out at Las 
Palomas. We had expected to reach Aguas 
Calientes, where there were primitive accommoda- 
tions for travelers, before dark, but owing to very 
rough and chucky trail between Yuma and Dome 
and some slow going near Middle Well darkness 
overtook us before we reached Las Palomas. 

As we had no commissary we decided to push on 
to Aguas Calientes in spite of the lateness of the 
hour. The country was dotted with giant Saguaro 
cactus and creosote bushes which took on all sorts 
of weird shapes in the glare of our acetylene head- 
lights. About ten o'clock it seemed to me that I 
saw some moving object far ahead and thought it 
was probably a skulking coyote, but as we forged 
ahead our headlights picked up a man walking 
towards us along the dim path. 

17 



18 THE DESERT TRAMP 

As the spot was miles from any habitation it was 
hard to believe one's eyes, as certainly no sane person 
would brave this barren and desolate arid country 
on a mere hike. That would be gambling with 
death in too reckless a fashion. As w^e drew near 
we noticed that the man was weaving sideways or 
stumbling ahead like a drunken person. He even- 
tually stopped as we were a couple of hundred feet 
distant and fell prone on the ground. 

On reaching him I jumped off the car and bent 
over his prostrate body and only then realized that 
here was one of those terrible cases where a human 
had almost succumbed to the grasp of the desert. 
He was about all in from thirst. Filling a cup 
from our canvass water bag I fed water to him a 
drop at a time and as he gradually regained 
strength had to use physical force to prevent him 
from gulping down the entire contents of the cup 
at one draught. The wonder of a few drops of the 
life-giving fluid ! 

Very gradually increasing the dose of water ad- 
ministered at a few minutes interval he was in an 
hour's time able to sit up and eat a few crackers 
which were found in our lunch box. He was a 
sorry individual indeed, unkempt, blear-eyed, and 
very poorly clad. He carried an ordinary empty 
beer bottle tied with a string to his waist but had 
no bundle of clothing nor anything containing food. 

Eventually he was strong enough to give us his 
story or at least what was purported to be his story. 
Three days previously he had left Las Palomas, 
which by the way was only some ten miles distant, 
in search of a prospector's camp which he liad been 
told was only a dozen miles awav at the side of a 



THE DESERT TRAMP 



19 



mountain plainly visible from Las Palomas. It 
may be well to state here that Las Palomas is not 
a settlement but merely a tiesert trading store cater- 
ing to the occasional prospectors who with their 
outfits and burros roam over the desert in search 
of the El Dorado which is always expected to be 
discovered tomorrow. He had failed to locate the 
camp and had utterly lost his sense of orientation, 
wandering haphazardly about without knowing 
where he was headed. He had had nothing to eat 
since leaving Las Palomas and only the one pint 
bottle of water while his suffering from the daytime 
heat of the desert was, if anything, only increased 
by the cold of the nights which penetrated his poorly 
clad body. 

In spite of his terrible experience and narrow 
escape from madness and probable death he insisted 




The sandy trail throiigh the Imver Gila J'alley desert, 
Arizona, can hardly he called a boulevard, in spite of 
<ivhich motor cars negotiate it "somehoiv." Some day 
there ^vill be a real hiijh^iay constructed through this 
section 



20 



THE DESERT TRAMP 



that he would continue his search for the camp if 
we would only fill his bottle with water. Whether 
this was an example of foolhardiness or grit, or 
possibly fear of civilization with its officers of law I 
do not know, but no amount of persuasion on our 
part could induce him to abandon his intentions. 

After teaching him to find the north star and 
indicating the exact direction of Las Palomas w^e 
filled his waterbottle, presented him with our can- 
teen full of the precious moisture, and as we cranked 
up our car to proceed he snuggled under a creosote 
bush for a nap. 

Ever since that day I have often wondered if we 
saved his life only to have ^im lose it possibly in 
some remote canyon of that wonderfully fascinat- 
ing desert country or if he found his camp, helped 
to work the riches from the ground and today is 
possibly one of those who enjoy the prosperity in 
some large city, which his evident education clearly 
fitted him to appreciate under happier circumstances. 



optimism 

IN TRACING the Midland Trail, now the 
Roosevelt National Highway, across the 
United States, we passed through Western 
Kansas in the month of July during a time of ter- 
rible drought. Truly this was a benighted country 
that season. First the grasshoppers, or "hoppers" 
as the settlers call them, had eaten every green leaf 
in the cornfields, which only a week or two pre- 
vious had by their fine stand aroused such glowing 
hopes of a bounteous harvest, leaving only the bare 
stalks and making the fields look as though some 
crazy person had raised a crop of beanpoles. 

On top of this came one of those dreaded hot 
winds out of the north which feels like a blast out 
of a furnace and wither all growing things to wilted 
shreds in a few days. Then the grasshoppers re- 
turned and as there was nothing else left fished 
the job by eating the cornstalks, which .^|| had 
scorned on their first visit when green v^etation 
was plentiful. These insects would fly in swarms 
and would soon become plastered on the front of 
the radiator of our car in such numbers as to pre- 
vent the fan from drawing air through it and neces- 
sitated frequent stops to scrape their charred bodies 
off with a stick. Besides our windshield had to 
have frequent cleaning of the juices of their bat- 
tered bodies as we met in head-on collisions. When 
one hit us in the face the force of the impact would 
cause considerable pain as though we were hit by a 
pebble. 

As may readily be imagined the appearance of 

21 



22 OPTIMISM 




The prairie schooner, noia fast disappearing from the 
plains country, being superseded by the rapid and prac- 
tical modern motor car, ivas a frequent sight along the 
pathfinder's trail a feiv years ago 

the country looked so hopeless and dispiriting as to 
make one wonder why anyone had ever had the 
temerity and courage to ever settle there or at least 
to continue living in a region where fortune could 
ordinarily be counted on to favor one with her 
smiles only once in five or six years. With these 
thoughts in mind I stopped at one of the homesteads 
which seemed if possible more afflicted and utterly 
barren than the rest. 

A man came out on the porch followed by a 
woman who, from natural curiosity to know what 
the strangers wanted, came to the door to listen to 
the conversation. In place of wobegone expression 
of despair I was certainly rather taken aback by the 
genial good-natured smile which met my greetings, 
After a few remarks about the proposed highway I 
cautiously offered my sympathy about the hardships 
incident on the failure of the crops. Instead of 
receiving in return a long tale of woe the farmer 



OPTIMISM 23 

passed it off as a matter of only passing moment, 
maintaining that they were pretty sure to get one 
good crop in five and that the one good crop every 
fifth year brought larger net returns thgn five 
mediocre crops in the East and he thanked his God 
that he was not cramped by too close neighbors — 
and in fact he was glad he lived in God's country, 
viz. : Western Kansas. An opinion to which his 
good wife nodded a smiling agreement. 

If there is a more sunny optimist on the face of 
this green earth than a West Kansas farmer I would 
like to meet him. 




All set for the pioneer trip, in 1907 , over the noiv famous 
"Ideal Tour" of the Neiv England States 



The Cow and the Route Book 

THE NEXT year after I laid out the "Ideal 
Tour" of New England a general publicity 
tour over the route was organized and sev- 
eral of the automobile editors of the New York 
daily papers were invited to take part in the junket. 
There were some twenty cars in the caravan and 
everything went well with everybody enjoying the 
beautiful country and the good hotels even though 
in those early days before the era of paved high- 
ways the roads failed to come up to their present 
standard of excellence. 

At one particularly scenic spot in New Hamp- 
shire a stop was made by the roadside in order to 
allow everyone the opportunity to enjoy the won- 
derful view, and a couple of the newspaper men 
strolled along the road a little way. One of these 
men was known for his droll sayings and dry wit, 
the kind that is uttered without the suspicion of a 
smile though it generally brought a roar of appre- 
ciaCtion from those that heard his witty words. 

A short way down the road these two men noted 
a farmer just across the fence struggling to tie a 
board in front of a cow's face, a performance that 
was difficult in view of the fact that the poor bovine 
had no horns to which to fasten the board. The 
other newspaper man, not the witty one, was a city- 
bred chap and immediately wanted to know from 
the farmer why he attempted to practice such 
cruelty on his cow, the most useful animal on earth. 
In fact he grew quite irate and upbraided the farmer 
rather severely. After listening in silence for a 

24 



THE COW AND THE ROUTE BOOK 



25 



while to this tirade the farmer informed him that 
it was necessary to tie the board in front of the 
cow's eyes in order to prevent her from seeing and 
thus finding weak spots in the fence through which 
to make her way into the neighbor's fields and 
damage the crops growing there. 

This true and reasonable answer seemed to sat- 
isfy the humane newspaperman when our droll wit 
pulled one of the route-information books, which 
were universally used in those days, out of his pocket 
and handing it to the farmer said most seriously: 
"The board is cruelty to animals. Tie this to her 
neck and if she can find her way anywhere with 
that she deserves a feed in your neighbor's field," 
then turned on his heel and without a trace of a 
smile returned to the waiting cars. 




In the early days of motor route pathfinding Nenv Eng- 
land roads ivere not paved though perfectly adequate for 
horsedraivn traffic 



Marooned 

WHILE making the original survey of the 
Northwest Trail, later called the National 
Parks Highway, we left New York in the 
middle of June and arrived at Glendive in the Yel- 
lowstone River Valley in Montana with fair speed, 
after some rather painful experiences with North 
Dakota mosquitoes, as related in another chapter, 
and after crossing the Little Missouri river at 
IMedora, N. D., on the railroad bridge. It will be 
remembered that Medora is the little town at the 
edge of the "Bad-lands" where Col. Theodore 
Roosevelt punched cattle when a >"oung man and 
incidentallv received the inspiration to write of the 
West. 

As we proceeded up the Yellowstone Valley, 
along the historic path of many a doughty pioneer, 
trapper. Indian and soldier we learned of floods in 
the upper reaches of the river, caused by the melt- 
ing snows of the Rocky Mountains. Ha\ing had 
a rather hazardous experience in crossing the Pow- 
der River, as told elsewhere, we pitched camp one 
night at a ranch house, which was located on a knoll 
near the lonesome station of Zero. There was 
more than irony in that name. 

When we awoke next morning we were located 
on an island, the knoll being entirely surrounded by 
floodwater from the river which flowed nearby. 
The rancher assured us that there was no cause 
for apprehension as he had had this experience in 
June every year of the three years he had lived there 
and that the water would subside in a couple of 

26 



MAROONED 27 



days at the most. In the meantime the water was 
still rising and our island gradually growing smaller 
while the shores seemed to grow more distant 

hourly. 

However we felt reassured by the rancher's con- 
fidence and proceeded to have as good a time as the 
circumstances would allow. As our commissary 
was practically empty when we reached this locality, 
it having been our intention to replenish it at Miles 
City, we were dependent on the rancher and his 
good wife for meals and we were very hospitably 
made to feel that we were welcome to share what- 
ever their larder afforded. The continual rising of 
the w^ater caused us considerable anxiety and I noted 
that the rancher was not altogether easy in his 
mind. Near dusk it seemed that the flood had 
about reached the peak and though our island by 
that time seemed mighty small we retired for the 
night with the feeling that it would have grown to 
much greater size by morning. In this expectation 
we found ourselves disappointed when daylight 
revealed about the same condition as the night 
before. 

All day we watched the flood racing by carrying 
trees, logs, sheds and small houses and by night 
time there seemed to be no appreciable diminution 
in the stage of the water. We had by then become 
so used to the idea of being marooned that the 
familiarity with the strange and fascinating spec- 
tacle of the raging waters, as well as with the pos- 
sible danger of our situation, had in some degree 
blunted our fears. The following morning the 
waters were a trifle higher than the night before, 
our island was now not over an acre in extent. 



28 



MAROOXI.n 



\\'hilc catiiiiT bicaktast at the ranch house that 
iiiorninL: 1 Lrot the impression tliat it seemed com- 
paratively scant in volume and the housewife evi- 
denced considerable anxiety while servino; us. How- 
ever these manifestations were not sufHciently pro- 
nounced to leave a lasting remembrance and were 
soon forgotten in the more important business of 
watching the flood. On the fourth day the waters 
showed only a barely appreciable diminution and 
the housewife confessed to being out of Hour for 
bread, the Hood having caught them just as they 
were about to lay in a new supply oi food of various 
kinds, which had in fact reached the railroad sta- 
tion but had not yet been hauled home. 

The situation now became more serious as there 
was no other food available except some chickens 
and three or four turkevs. On the seventh dav the 




^4 

Montana "couUt-s'' often ha^'t' soft oo-zy bor.oms. Thr 
coii-f'ony, hy aid of a lariat connecting the saddle horn 
li'i'h the front axle, brought our car out of this predica- 
ment in a jiffy 



MAROON KD -^ 



chickens were all eaten and how we did hate 
chickens, tried, stewed or otherwise prepared, by 
the time the last was consumed. After the iirst 
turkey things seemed indeed dark, just fowl with- 
out potatoes, bread or biscuits, became as bad as 
the proverbial mule of civil war time when the 
choice in some army camps rested between fried, 
roasted, stewed or jerked mule days on end. 

To our great relief and pleasant surprise we had 
on the tenth day for breakfast a dish of delicious 
white meat which seemed exceedingly palatable after 
the continuous diet of fowl. Our curiosity was 
intense to know what it was and whence it came. 
After much persuasion the rancher told us he had 
been lucky enough to catch a couple of prairie dogs, 
which had been driven out of their flooded under- 
ground apartment, and wasn't it lucky? Well, 
maybe it was, but the expression on the faces of us 
three Easteners did not seem to indicate that we 
appreciated our luck. Especially my wife seemed 
to show an utter lack of appreciation of this good 
fortune if one could judge by the wobegone expres- 
sion on her face. 

We were marooned on tliis Robinson Crusoe 
island sixteen days in all, and eventually after 
arduous struggles across soggy river flats succeeded 
in piloting our car into IVIiles City. And it may be 
believed that bread and butter and coffee and pie, 
and then some more bread and butter, tasted like 
the manna and ambrosia of the Gods! And then 
to top it all off— a pipe of blissful smoke. Chickens, 
ofEered in any style whatsoever, had no attraction 
for us for several years after. 



A Modern Noah's Ark 

ON ONE occasion while inspecting the route 
which later became the famous River-to- 
River road across Iowa, we failed on 
account of slow and heavy going, to reach the town 
where we had planned to spend the night, and as 
my car always, even nowadays when en route, car- 
ries a camping outfit, we pulled into a school-house 
yard to pitch camp for the night. As there usually 
is good drinking water, a supply of wood and other 
conveniences available in country school-house yards, 
they were and are now favorite camping places in 
the West and this particular yard was especially 
inviting because it was level and smooth and was 
carpeted with a thick even crop of grass. 

After having erected the tent and sitting down 
to our supper a boy came riding into the yard, made 
a tour of inspection and disappeared down the road 
at a lively gallop. 

Shortly he reappeared accompanied by a team 
hauling an immense wagon built like a house, with 
doors and curtained windows and painted gaily like 
a gypsie wagon, also by another smaller wagon be- 
hind which a cow was tied with a short rope. This 
caravan pulled into the yard and stopped a few 
feet from our camp. Shortly the most wonderful 
collection of animate things appeared. Besides the 
four horses and the cow there came from those 
wagons two hogs, two goats, four geese, three 
ducks, a half dozen chickens, six dogs of various 
sizes and breeds, a cat, a monkey and a parrot, in 
fact the wagon proved a veritable Noah's Ark. 

30 



A MODERN NOAH S ARK 



31 



After stretching their cramped limbs these various 
species of the animal kingdom proceeded to inspect 
the premises and showed a special fondness for in- 
specting our camp and its equipment. The boss of 
this outfit was a tremendous giant of a woman who 
assured us that her animals were merely curious 
and asked us not to mind them, which advice was 
easier to give than to follow. The squawk of ducks, 
hissing of geese, crowing of cocks, grunting of hogs, 
barking of dogs and chattering of the parrot and 
the monkey furnished a veritable bedlam of noises 
while the woman, her male hired hand and the boy 
proceeded to milk the cow and the goats, attend to 
the horses and get their camp ready. 

Everything was done with dispatch as each had 
his particular task to perform, and in an hour's time 
everything was properly tucked away for the night, 
even the animals seemed to know by long training, 
exactly what was expected of them. 



mj. 




On the dirt roads of the Middle West prairie States it 

is a ivise precaution to use Weed chains on front and rear 

ijcheels ivhen the roads are nvet 



32 A MODERN NOAH's ARK 

Now came the time for a visit over the campfire 
and the woman proved a very interesting talker, 
recounting her manj^ varied experiences on the road. 
She was what is called in the West a ''drifter," that 
is a person who is never satisfied to stay long enough 
in one place to become a part of the community. 
She had roamed this way over the West for many 
years, a sort of self-sufficient and self-reliant tramp, 
making a living by trading lace and embroideries to 
farmer's wives and occasionally trading some live- 
stock and varying this legitimate "business" by tell- 
ing fortunes whenever she found a gullible speci- 
men. Within her limitations and requirements she 
said she managed to get along, felt free to come and 
go wherever the fancy dictated and to "be her own 
boss and owe nobody a debt either of money or 
gratitude." She was a shrewd philosopher of the 
native sort. 

Next morning we got started by the time her 
"crew" were harnessing their horses and w^e parted 
w^ith her assurance that she would run across us 
again somewhere between the Alleghenies and the 
Rockies. 



No Gasoline — and Yet 

ON MY first trip into the Apache country I 
had been assured that if I could only reach 
Springerville, gasoline would undoubtedly 
be found at that settlement. We left McCarthy sta- 
tion on the Santa Fe railroad and cut across country 
on faint trails meandering across mountains, be- 
tween lava beds and cliffs, using mountain peaks as 
guiding landmarks, and finally after ninety mile^ 
of the roughest kind of going, unfit for wagons, let 
alone motor cars, made Nations' Ranch with the 
gasoline tank almost empty and with more than 
forty miles yet to go to Springerville. As luck 
would have it a few gallons of the precious fluid 
were found at the ranch, where it had been kept 
for a pumping engine and this enabled us to reach 
Springerville. My motor car, or ''outfit," as the 
local people called it, was the first ever seen in this 
Mormon settlement, located so far from a railroad. 
Mr. Becker, the local merchant, who was later 
destined to become the greatest power for the 
Good-Roads movement in Eastern Arizona, thought 
I would surely be able to procure gasoline at Fort 
Apache, sixty miles further in the heart of the wild 
and exceedingly rough country of the MogoUon and 
White Mountains. As no motor car had ever be- 
fore visited the region, it seemed foolhardy, I was 
told, to attempt to reach the army post over the 
execrable trails across the volcanic plateau of the 
White Mountains, over nine thousand feet high. 
However, if I dared to undertake it the merchant 
was willing to give me the gasoline contained in the 

33 



34 



NO GASOLINE AND YET 




At many a place in the rugged country of Colorado and 

Neiv Mexico, ivhere noiv the touring motorist finds ivell 

constructed highivays, the pathfinder struggled up nar- 

roiv defiles, steep and rocky 



Store-lamps, the only supply in the settlement. This 
scant supply coupled with the stories about the 
country ahead did not promise well, but neverthe- 
less we started out. The ascent of the mountains 
proved exceedingly arduous and so slow that we 
were overtaken by darkness and w^orse yet by a 
blizzard (it was in November) by the time we 
reached half way across the plateau. More than 
half frozen after a tough tussle with snowdrifts, 
cold blasts, buried lava boulders and lost trail, we 
arrived towards dawn at Cooley's Ranch, forty-two 
miles out, the only house on the way. 

After being thawed out and having partaken of 
a substantial breakfast we finally arrived at Fort 
Apache and found unbounded hospitality but no 
gasoline. Here was a serious situation. At the 
time there was only a small troop of cavalry with 



NO GASOLINE AND YET 



35 



three officers at the post and these three were very 
glad to see somebody from ''the outside," especially 
if that somebody would make a fourth hand at 
whist. Chatting about the gasoline situation be- 
tween deals I was offered all sorts of sympathy, but 
as this would not move motor cars it seemed there 
was nothing to do but sit down and wait for a team 
to go to Holbrook on the railroad for a supply, and 
freighters took two weeks for a round trip to that 
point. 

During the game the captain's "boy," a Filipino, 
came into the room for some uniforms that were 
hanging in a closet. He inspected these carefully 
and left the room with them. Asking the captain 
where the boy was going with the clothes at that 
time of night I was answered that he was to remove 




-m^ 



Ours ivas the first car that ever ventured to cross the 
9000 ft. high plateau of the White mountains, in the 
Apache country, Arizona. Hidden under the snoiv ivere 
largo lava boulders ivhich immensely aggravated the 
difficulties of the crossing 



36 NO GASOLINE AND YET 

some spots from them. Struck by an idea I suddenly 
came to life with a new hope and asked to be per- 
mitted to talk with the boy. He was called and 
was much surprised at my curiosity regarding what 
he used for removing the spots. He said he used a 
cleaning fluid which he got from the post quarter- 
master. In spite of the late hour the quartermaster 
was sent for and admitted having four or five gal- 
lons of this "cleaning fluid" in stock. Next morn- 
ing this very fluid made the engine frisky as a colt 
and the contents of the quartermatser's "cleaning 
fluid" container enabled me to reach Globe, sixty 
miles distant and the incident had become a mere 
experience of the trail. 

Nowadays gasoline and all sorts of motor car 
supplies are procurable at a number of places along 
the same route and a good cinder road crosses the 
White Mountains plauteau, while thousands of 
cars pass through Springerville every season — and 
it is onlj^ nine years since my first trip into this 
region. 



Frenchman's Station 

ONE moonbrlght midsummer's evening our 
party arrived at Frenchman's Station, lo- 
cated in the most arid part of Central 
Nevada near the trail that in former days was the 
Pony Express route and two generations later be- 
came the Lincoln Highway. The station was kept 
by a Frenchman who made a living by hauling 
water from a spring, twelve miles distant, and sell- 
ing it to freighters hauling ore and supplies between 
mining camps to the South and the railroad at 
Eureka. He also had sleeping accommodations in 
one of the two rooms in his cabin and furnished 
meals to travelers. 

As the hour was late and my wife somewhat tired, 
we thought, that rather than take the time to pitch 
the tent and prepare camp, we would look oyer the 
accommodations of the station. I was deputized to 
examine these and report. I found that the double 
iron bedstead in the "guest room" occupied every 
inch of space necessitating undressing in the other 
room or perform the feat in the bed somewhat in 
the manner necessary in a Pullman berth. The 
facts were promptly reported back to the car. 

Friend wife thought she had better have an in- 
dividual peep and after looking the situation over 
thought it would do if the host would furnish clean 
linen. After having this cryptic word explained to 
him as meaning clean sheets and pillow cases he 
rolled his eyes and sputtered a flow of protestations 
assuring us that we need have no worry about the 
linen as the people who slept in that bed last were 

37 



38 frenchman's station 

perfectly clean people, in fact as he put it : "as clean 
as Bill Taft." Mr. Taft at that time was our 
President. 

Eventually we succeeded in inducing the produc- 
tion of satisfactory bedding and proceeded out into 
the lean-to shed of a kitchen in anticipation of 
something to eat. Here my wife discovered a 
luscious-looking watermelon partly covered by a wet 
cloth to keep it cool and at once made a requisition 
on a generous slice. Our host, however, held up 
his hands in protest and with many apologies main- 
tained that to grant this request would be out of 
the question and entirely impossible as he had had 
it brought all the way from Reno in anticipation 
of the visit of the "great pathfinder" who was ex- 




On the Lincoln Highivay across Xf-vaJd there are several 
of these mud fiats. When dry they afford excellent going, 
but ivhen ivet become absolutely impassable for motor 
traffic and have caused great hardships and delay to 
transcontinental motor tourists. Extensive improvements, 
noiv under 'way, ivill make for comfortable travel through 
this region 



frenchman's station 39 

pected over the route on an inspection trip as stated 
in the Reno papers and this was intended as a pleas- 
ing surprise to the great man. To encounter a 
luscious watermelon in the most arid part of 
Nevada, a hundred miles from a railroad, would be 
sure to convince him that after all this route had 
its advantages and should be advocated as a National 
touring boulevard and thus bring lucrative business 
to the station. 

When my wife asked who this great man was he 
produced a copy of a Reno newspaper a few days 
old which contained an account of the expected visit 
of her husband. The half-tone photograph accom- 
panying the article was taken when I wore city 
clothes and thus he had not recognized me. We 
chose not to enlighten him and enjoyed a fair 
meal sans watermelon. Our host in the meantime 
volubly set forth his bright prospects of future 
profits from travel over the expected boulevard. He 
was so earnest and enthusiastic that we did not have 
the heart to discourage him. 

Now on the door of my car was a small brass 
plate on which was engraved my name and official 
position. Next morning when I went out to the 
car to see if everything was all right, I found the 
watermelon on the tonneau floor covered by the wet 
cloth but our host was nowhere in sight. In fact 
we prepared our own breakfast and only when we 
were ready to depart did he come from behind a 
nearby small hill and with tears in his eyes uttered 
his profound mortification over the fact that he had 
not recognized me, and his hopes that I would not 
let "this unfortunate demonstration of his absurd 



40 



J^REXCHMAN S STATION 



Stupidity" inrtuence me against "locating the boule- 
vard" past his station. 

While the boulevard is still only on the maps this 
route has attracted such a share of the transconti- 
nental motor traffic that it is safe to assume that 
our host is reconciled for the lack of the boulevard 
by the increased flow of revenue from the tourist 
traffic. At least 1 hope he is as he was a cheerful, 
good old soul, residing alone out there in the barren 
and burning desert. 




In the Mogollon range of mountains^ in Arizona and S eii 
Mexico, mountain lions of great size abound. This hun- 
ter, ivhom the pathfinder encountered in this region, had 
a zi-agon load of mountain lion pelts 



Fiiculty of Of'icfitdtiofi 

Wllll.l\ niakiiiL:; the piDiu-cr motor sur\c'v up 
the ^'c^o^^stonc \'allo\ in IVIontana. onit 
\\iiat is now the National Parks Highway 
ami alsi) tho \'cUo\\stoiic 'I'rail, \vc arrived, after a 
hard tussle \\ ith llomleil ri\er flats, at the little town 
ot Custer. Here I found that further pro*:;ress up 
the valle\ was out of the question on account of the 
flood, so be^an investigating the possibility of work- 
ing out a way around throu!j;h the hills to the south. 
1 was told there \\ as an oKl trail alonji; the crest of 
Pine Rid^e, in view some miles to the south, and 
that 1 miizht be able to find a way up to the crest 
of this rid^e. though no one seemed to know where 
a trail went up or \\ as \\ illinii; to venture an opinion 
as to whether a motor car \\ould be able to attain 
the summit up the apparently steep side slopes. 

However, to sit still was not on the program, so 
we started for the hills with eyes anxiously scanninjr 
them from afar in an effort to discover what might 
prove a path or trail of some kind. We drove across 
country along sheep trails and across them till w^e 
came to the first foothills without having discovered 
any sign of a trail up the slopes. Wc did find, how- 
e\er, that the ridge was deeply incised by small 
canyons or gashes and after having carefully in- 
spected several of these on foot, I thought I saw the 
possibility of reaching the top of the ridge by zig- 
zagging up the rather sharply inclined side of one 
of these cauNons. In making our way up through 
the gravelly dry bed of the cannon we soon found 
that we could not get out of this bed to gain the 

41 



42 



FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 



firmer ground of the side hill, in fact we were soon 
so firmly imbedded in the loose gravel that we could 
move neither forward or backwards, and realized 
that it would be the arduous work of many hours to 
extricate the car from its position. 

Before entering the canyon or "draw" as it is 
called in Montana, I had noticed the white canvas 
of a sheep-wagon some two or three miles distant 
on the rolling foothills. To enlighten the unin- 
itiated a sheep-wagon is the home-on-wheels of 
a sheep herder. This home is moved from one loca- 
tion to another about every two weeks to provide 
new grazing grounds for his flock of about two 
thousand sheep which he has in charge for the 
owner, who may own from ten to sixty of these 
sheep-wagons and who brings a team of horses for 
moving them from one location to another when 
required. 

In order to avoid the arduous work of getting the 




This situation, encountered in Montana, necessitated the 

taking apart and reconstructing the bridge. Laborious 

and sloiv but counted as all in the day's ivork 



FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 43 

car out I took our driver Heinle out to the edge of 
the draw and pointed out to him the location of 
the sheep-wagon and asked him to go over there to 
see if he could procure the use of a team, caution- 
ing him to note well the location of the canyon in 
order to find his way back to our car. Now Heinie 
had the faculty of losing his way more prominently 
developed than anyone I ever met, in fact his bump 
of orientation was so dwarfed that he would lose 
his way back to the hotel of a city if the garage 
were around the corner and thus out of sight of it. 
Hence my cautioning him not to miss the particular 
canyon in which our car was when he returned from 
the sheep-wagon with or without the horses, espe- 
cially in view of the fact that the car was down in 
a depression and could not be seen unless one came 
within a couple of hundred feet of it. 

Heinie started out assuring me he would be back 
in a jiffy and we could hear his merry whistle grow 
fainter as he drew away into the distance. I started 
to make a fire to prepare a bit to eat as friend wife 
suggested we should have everything ready against 
Heinie's return so as to be prepared to move 
promptly. This was about two o'clock in the aft- 
ernoon. In the course of an hour or a little more I 
went out of the draw to look for Heinie, but he 
was nowhere in sight. We waited all the long aft- 
ernoon and still no Heinie. We were beginning to 
get considerably worried about the boy, particularly 
when I saw through the field glasses that the sheep- 
herder was preparing his supper and that he was 
alone at his camp. I fired a couple of shots to 
attract Heinie's attention in case he was lost and 
roaming over the side of the ridge. As no answer- 



44 FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 

ing cry resulted we finally prepared our camp for 
the night and had a good fire burning, thinking 
that the glare of the flames might guide the boy 
back. 

Next morning at an anxious and hasty breakfast 
Heinie was still missing, and the worst was that I 
did not think it well to leave my wife alone in camp 
in order to go and hunt for the boy, as one of the 
Indian sheep-herders might pay our camp a visit. 
All the morning I scanned the surrounding country 
with the field glasses and finally about two o'clock, 
twenty-four hours after his leaving the car, I spied 
him afar off coming towards the ridge accompanied 
by a man driving a team of horses. Much relieved 
I hurried down to the car and reported to my wife 
that Heinie was in sight and to help get something 
ready for him to eat in case he was hungry. The 
meal about ready, I again went up on the slight ele- 
vation from where I had seen the party approaching, 
but Heinie and his companion had disappeared and 
were nowhere in sight nor, in spite of shots fired, 
shouts and waving of red blankets, could we dis- 
cover any further sign of them for the rest of the 
entire day. Another anxious night was spent in 
camp and Heinie was still missing the next noon. 
However, two hours later he again appeared in the 
focus of the field glasses still accompanied by his 
friend with the horses, and this time I took no 
chances of loosing him again, but ran out to meet 
them about a mile from the car. 

Poor Heinie had had a hard time of it. When 
he reached the sheep-wagon he found it deserted, but 
spied another one a mile or so beyond, and here he 
found willing folks with a team who was glad to 



FACULTY OF ORIENTATION 45 

be of help. But alas, when Heinle undertook to act 
as guide back to the car he stared in blank amaze- 
ment at the ridge. Every canyon and gash looked 
alike to him and there were literally hundreds of 
them. So they spent forty-eight hours hunting for 
the right one, with poor Heinie worried sick. He 
was surely a happy boy to get to the wheel of his 
beloved car again. 

The team yanked us out of our troubles in no 
time, and after several attempts in various localities 
we finally attained the summit of the ridge. That 
was indeed some ride along the hog-back crest of 
Pine Ridge, crossing saddles and rifts, and when, by 
evening, we finally succeeded in finding a way down 
on the other side of the ridge we were a mighty 
tired lot in camp that night. Next day we made 
Miles City via Harder and found that they were 
organizing searching parties to go and look for us 
as our departure from Custer three days before had 
been promptly chronicled in the city papers and our 
arrival that first night had been expected. It was 
thought that we had met with an accident in the 
hills or that we might have been murdered by 
renegades. 



Yuma Border 

BEFORE the construction of the highway 
bridge at Yuma it was nothing unusual for 
motorists, who reached the ferry on the 
California side after six o'clock P. M., to have to 
spend the night in their cars as the ferryman could 
not be hired, threatened or otherwise persuaded to 
break his rule not to work after hours, no matter 
what the hardships to the tourists, who were com- 
pelled to sit there in the dark, generally supperless, 
too, and watch the blinking arc lights of the city of 
Yuma just across the river, and not a wide river at 
that. 

Having had this experience on two separate occa- 
sions, I put the matter up to the city authorities and 
the movement for the building of a highway bridge 
connecting the convenient bluf¥s just above the 
ferry, already discussed as a possibility of the future, 
took on added impetus. Concrete action followed. 
By the co-operation of the Federal government 
with the States of Arizona and California, the 
bridge was built — and the ferryman lost his job as 
he fully deserved. 



46 



A Mormon Dance 

ON ONE of my trips from Zuni to Inscrip- 
tion Rock our party spent the night at the 
small Mormon settlement of Ramah and 
that evening were invited to attend a dance at the 
place which served as schoolhouse, house of worship 
and public meeting house generally. When a fair- 
sized crowd had assembled, the fiddler tuned up and 
the merry-makings ready to start, the elder, or what- 
ever he is called in the Mormon church, arose and 
asked everybody to join in prayer. Like many a 
deacon of other faiths he proceeded to give the 
Lord a lot of information, which he seemed to think 
the Supreme Power should know about and finally 
asked that evil thoughts be kept from the dancers. 

Some of the young men in my party, who had 
been introduced generally among the young ladies, 
had evidently missed an introduction to two or three 
of them and when they asked for a dance were 
promptly turned down by these because they were 
not properly introduced. A strict observance of the 
conventions were demanded even in this isolated and 
remote region. The festive occasion was closed 
with another long prayer. 



47 



A Mexican Wedding 

ENTERING on one occasion an all-Mexican 
village in Arizona we were met by a wed- 
ding procession. Preceded by two musicians, 
one playing a guitar and one a violin, the white- 
dressed bride, led by the hand of the groom, came 
towards us with measured and stately strides. Fol- 
lowing were the relatives of the happy pair, all with 
beaming faces and chatting animatedly. 

As we drove to one side to make room for the 
procession the groom halted its march, came over to 
our car and handed me a written invitation to 
attend a dance with refreshments that evening at 
the house of the bride's father. Presumably this 
invitation was extended to all strangers encounted 
during the progress of the procession. Surely a con- 
vincing proof of the great hospitality of these unlet- 
tered simpleminded folk, this extending a friendly 
hand of welcome to whoever enter their gates. 




A 'Mexican ii-edding at Spring er-rille, Ariz. Yes, right 

here in the United States, not in a remote corner of 

some foreign country 

4S 



The Yuma Mummy 

As A proof of the dryness of the desert air 
1 will relate an experience 1 encountered in 
^ Yuma, even though the joke, somewhat 
ghastly, was on myself. 

One of the chief boosters for creating motor 
tourist traffic to and through tlie town was the city 
undertaker. The president of the local automobile 
club escorted me over to the undertaking establish- 
ment to introduce me, and finding no one in attend- 
ance in the office left me there, with an apology, to 
go in search of the proprietor. I sat down in a 
chair, and after idly glancing through a magazine 
which told all about coffins and shrouds, 1 looked 
up and my eyes saw reflected in a mirror on the 
opposite wall, a man standing in the corner of the 
room behind my chair. And if a face could ever 
portray the definition of a diabolical grin this man's 
certainly did. To say that I was startled is putting 
it mildly. I am afraid I arose from that chair with 
a bound, surely with an alacrity frowned upon in 
the best social circles where deliberateness is a dis- 
tinguishing mark. Facing the man with the grin I 
was astounded to note that it was a grin that refused 
to come off, it was there for keeps. 

Upon closer inspection this ghastly apparition 
proved to be a mummified human with long hair 
streaming down alongside his sunken face, and 
gleaming white teeth glistening brightly. Heavy 
eyebrows and some of the tousled hair hid its eye- 
sockets. It was fully dressed and standing almost 
straight in the corner of the room, leaning only 

49 



50 



THE YUMA MUMMY 



slightly against one wall. Xo wonder I was 
startled. 

Upon the arrival of the undertaker I was told 
this body had stood there in the corner of the room 
for more than a year, and that it was found out on 
the desert. The dry air prevented decay and merely 
turned the deceased into a mummy. No one seemed 
to know anything of the man who met this luckless 
fate. It was many a day before I forgot this 
experience. 




On tup uj the IV kite muunUiins plateau in Arizona. Some 

of these small brooks, ivhile shalloiv, has bottoms like 

glue. Obtaining traction is most dijficult 



Noi 



or tons 



IN 1 ^M 1 thr CiliiKliMi Toiii was run troni Ni'w 
\ iM k \o j .u-ksiMi\ i!K- ill the month o\ OcXoWx. 
As 1 w .IS to start on a \o\\\c in\ rsti^atioii trip 
to i.\ilitoiina iumt thr hoi^iinnnL:, ot C)etobtM-. 1 ihil 
\\w pathliiuliiii: tor the CiliiKhMi Tour in the hitter 
part oi Auv^ust. arri\ inii. in laeksoiuiUe thi" hrst 
week in September. 

C^wiiii: to pressure oi time 1 tra\elh\l tairh tast 
tor a strietl\ pathlinilini: tour, especial 1\ when eon- 
siderint: the tact that careful stiip maps weie m ule 




The road ix'i^vt't'n ///<• capital of the Nation and the 
capital of the Confederacy ivas certainly a toiKjh prop- 
osition for a motor ctir to netjotiate up to IQIQ ivhen con- 
ditions licre sonteivhat impro^wd 



51 



52 



NOTORIOUS 



of the route as we went along, besides notes of hotel 
accommodations for the big crowd to follow on the 
Glidden Tour. This did not give us much time for 
the many various entertainments usually attendant 
upon a tour of this kind, especially where cities on 
two parallel possible routes were bitterly and jeal- 
ously contending for the honor of being chosen as a 
noon or night stop for the big tour. Many unique 
arguments were often brought forth in such cases. 
I think that pathfinding as a whole, considering the 
delicate task of choosing only one, and that the best 
one, of several competitive optional routes without 
causing hard feelings or worse, is the best possible 
training for a man qualifying for the diplomatic 
service. 

However, I could not altogether avoid entertain- 
ments which were staged to show me honor or to 
influence my judgment in the choice of routes as 




Only a fezv years ago Florida "roads" ivere something 

long to he remembered by those ivho traveled over (or 

through) them 



NOTORIOUS 53 




Of course nobody expected to find real roads through 

Florida sivamps ivhen ive ivent pathfinding and it may be 

truthfully said that ive ivere not disappointed in our 

expectations 

the case might be. These occasions were usually 
attended by more or less speech-making — usually 
more. I was frequently presented to the assemblage 
in terms most extravagant as the greatest pathfinder 
since Daniel Boone and General Fremont. At one 
place I was called the "Daniel Boone of the Gaso- 
line Age," at another "John the Baptist of the 
Good Roads Gospel," or "The Great Pathfinder 
of the Good Roads Era," and similar flattering 
phrases. 

But it remained for the mayor of one of the 
smaller Georgia towns to cap the climax. In the 
center of the public square was the usual band stand, 
and when our car arrived with all its occupants, 
grimy from a combination of dust and perspiration. 
I was escorted up the steps of the stand, around 
which the majority of the citizens of the town were 



54 NOTORIOUS 

assembled. After the ma>or had made SDiiie rather 
lengthy and not altogether apropos remarks to the 
people he told them that they should feel especially 
honored that auspicious day in ha\ ing among them 
such a man as myself. Beckoning me to come for- 
ward he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, heard all 
oxer the square: "Allow me to present to you. m\ 
fellow citizens, the most notorious tourist of tlie 
age." Just that. Of course the laugh was on me. 

If I had not perfected my plans for another trans- 
continental trip it would have been my province to 
pilot the Glidden Tour o\er this route. As it was, 
my place was taken by one of my co-workers, an 
old and dear friend. Near the town where the 
mayor referred to me as the ni)torious, when he 
meant the notable tourist, the pilot car. running 
along at high speed, was ditched and the man who 
took my place as pilot was killed. 



The Padre* s Prophesy 

W 1 1 ION on an inspection tour over tin- 
Pacific Hig;lnvay from Seattle to San Die^o 
we eventually approached Southern Cali- 
fornia, it was late in the year and the Southland 
beckoned us with promise of sunshine and <^()Oi\ 
roads. Having entered upon Kl Camino Real, the 
old Kings Highway, wdiich in early days was only a 
trail connecting the twenty-two Franciscan Missions 
of California and which now constitutes a link in 
the Pacific Highway, it was of course inevitable that 
we decided to pay a \ isit to all the old missions, 
most of them now merely ruins, along the way. It 
was also of course inevitable that the camera w^as 
used freely to make photographs of the venerable 
structures as a means to refresh our memories of 
these visits in later years. 

Having had the most pleasant experiences all 
along the line and securing some splendid snap- 
shots, we eventually arrived at the Santa Ynez mis- 
sion near Los Olivos. A few' years previously this 
mission had lost its imposing tower, which had 
tumbled down in a storm, owning to erosion of its 
material of construction and general old age, so that 
the mission bell had been mounted on an unsightly 
scaffolding in the open place fronting the chapel 
entrance. I proceeded at once to get busy with the 
camera and, having taken all the photographs which 
I desired, noticed a small placnrd fastened on the 
front of the chapel door. 

Upon approaching to read the placard 1 found to 
my consternation that it w'as a polite request to 

55 



56 THE PADRE^S PROPHESY 

visitors not to make photographs of the mission be- 
fore first procuring the permission of the padre. I 
felt much mortified in having, though uninten- 
tionally, ignored the inhibition, especially as I 
noticed that the padre was watching our behavior 
from the porch of the mission house, attached to the 
chapel building. In order to make my excuses and 
set myself right with the padre, I stepped up to 
him and tendered apologies for my apparent dis- 
regard of his printed request. With a gracious 
smile he said it would be all right as he never knew 
a photograph which had been taken, without first 
securing the requested permission, to turn out any- 
thing but a failure. 

I assured him, however, that I knew my camera 
and also knew that my film was fresh stock, so I 
had no fear of the results, but would be happy to 
be allowed the privilege of making a contribution to 
the church box in partial atonement for my over- 
sight. While thanking me for this, he thought that 
the photographs nevertheless would turn out bad. 
After a few moments pleasant chat we parted the 
very best of friends. 

When in the course of a few days the trip was 
finished, and I had secured photographs of every 
one of the missions on the route, the films were 
developed. Every exposure made was excellent — 
except those made at Santa Ynez. The film was 
good, fresh stock, because others on the same roll 
came out fine. Thus the padre's prophesy came 
true, as the Santa Ynez photographs were so fogged 
that it was barely possible to recognize the objects 
intended to be depicted. 



Pesky Pests 



TO travelers beyond the fringe of civilization 
it is well known that the further north one 
reaches the bigger and more vicious the mos- 
quitoes are and, it seems, also more plentiful. 
While the damp regions of the tropic and sub-tropic 
countries of course have their share of the pests it is 
said that the mosquitoes of Alaska and the swampy 
wooded regions of Canada surpass the warmer cli- 
mates in the number, the insistent rapaciousness and 
venom of these insects which near the dusk of the 
evening sweep the country in literally dense clouds 
inflicting suffering and often death on animals and 
such human beings as are not prepared with veils, 
screens and special clothing to resist and render 
futile their onslaughts. 

However, the sloughs and coulees of our northern 
prairie states, such as Minnesota, the Dakotas and 
Montana, also furnish excellent breeding places 
for a species of mosquito which I believe in genuine 
devilishness and ingenuity, undiluted poison and 
militant generalship prove worthy matches to their 
Canadian and Alaskan cousins and to compare with 
which, the well-known and much condemned New 
Jersey variety are as tame household pets. 

While traversing the North Dakota prairies in 
search of the most likely location for a transconti- 
nental motor route into the northwest on one occa- 
sion we were approaching Bismarck, the state capi- 
tal. We w^ere still some twenty miles east of the 
city and were pushing on to reach a good dinner 
before dark when our trail lead us across a sort of 

57 



58 PESKY PESTS 

dike over several reed-grown swamps or sloughs, 
AVhen about half way across this dike, which was 
probably a quarter of a mile long, our car skidded 
off to one side and barely escaped plunging into the 
ooze of the swamp. 

As it was we were "stuck." While we were 
busily endeavoring to get the car back on to the 
crown of the dike it seemed to me that the sun sud- 
denly went down and the dusk of evening at once 
settled on the surrounding country. Looking up 
from the manipulation of the jack handle I saw a 
dense black cloud arise out of the slough and 
slowly, as though wafted by a breeze, draw nearer 
to us. I did not realize the nature of the thing till 
untold millions of mosquitoes buzzed around us 
and dived for an unprotected spot on our arms, 
heads, faces and necks. 

As it was absolutely essential to continue with 
the work of getting the car going we simply had 
to scrape the pests off by the handful whenever we 
had a hand free that could be spared for the pur- 
pose. When there was no more room for lodge- 
ment on the exposed parts of our bodies the insects 
would light on our clothing and proceed to bore 
until they struck blood. 

W^hen after some twenty minutes tussle we 
finally succeeded in getting the car under way again 
the swarm bloodthirstily pursued us for a while, 
but finally gave up the chase. By this time the poi- 
son injected into our S3'stems was beginning to have 
serious effects. We suffered cruelly and scratched 
ourselves until the blood flowed. On approaching 
the city I, who seemed to suffer the least, possibly 
on account of my being a tobacco smoker, had to 



PESKY PESTS 



59 



take the wheel from the driver, whose face had 
become so swollen from the poison that his eyes 
were fast becoming closed by their puffed condition. 
They were entirely closed in fact when we drew 
up in front of the hotel. 

We were compelled to stay in the town for two 
days under medical care before we had sufficiently 
eradicated the poison from our systems to be able to 
proceed. We surely acquired a wholesome respect 
for the efficiency of Mr. Mosquito and in the future 
were properly supplied with veils and heavy gloves 
as at least a partial protection. 





// ivas quite somr task io jerry the ('.(inaduin River in 

Oklahoma. In order to reach the ferry it ivas necessary 

to cover three-fourths of the riverbed's ividth on your 

oivn ivheels across sandbars and shalloiv ii'ater 



Good Fellows 

WHILE surveying the Meridian Road from 
Laredo on the Rio Grande, in Texas, to 
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which high- 
way practically divides the United States in two 
equal parts, some of the Texans accompanied me in 
two cars in order to boost for the improvement of 
the route and to extend a hearty welcome for a 
winter visit into the Sunny South to the dwellers 
of the more northerly states through which wc 
passed. 

Of course our cavalcade was met by delegations 
of enthusiasts which came to extend to us the hos- 
pitality of whatever community we were approach- 
ing along the entire route. These hearty welcomes 
compensated in a large measure for the many trying 
experiences which we had with rough trails, lack of 
culverts, primitive ferries over considerable rivers, 
furnace-like hot winds from parching corn and 
wheat fields, dust and perspiration. However, it 
must be admitted it sometimes added seriously to 
our discomfort to travel for several miles through 
a dusty country into a town when we were sand- 
wiched between many escorting cars in front and 
rear, thus compelling us to partake of a dust diet, 
blow north or blow south. 

It has been my good fortune during my many 
years of pathfinding and investigation of routes 
throughout the United States to meet many men in 
public life. Among these I have had fifty-two gov- 
erners of various states ride in my car during periods 
extending from only an hour or so up to a two 

60 



GOOD FELLOWS 61 




When it comes to boosting/ for Good Roads the West 

Texas communities easily take first prize. Here is a 

little bunch of boosters come out to meet the pathfinder 

and escort him into their toivn 

weeks good-road's campaign, and with few excep- 
tions I have found these state executives the best of 
fellows, clean-minded good sports, as ready to lend 
a hand at the shovel to get us out of a bad hole in 
the road as to get up on the tonneau seat and make 
a speech, and apparently as contented to roll up in 
a blanket beside the campfire after a supper of camp 
"vittles" as to retire to a sumptous suite of hotel 
rooms after an elaborate banquet. 

On this trip over the Meridian Road we arrived 
at a state line somewhere near halfway of the 
route and were met by the governor of the state, 
accompanied by a large welcoming delegation in a 
long string of automobiles. At the first town we 
came to, they had prepared quite a feast for us in 
the way of a barbecue lunch, where all the good 
things of the season was served in great plentitude 



62 



GOOD FELLOWS 



to everyone present. The governor of course was 
the object of special solicitude of a committee which 
had been appointed to particularly look after his 
comfort. I was seated alongside the governor and 
was much amused at the worry displayed by this 
coinmitttee when the governor let all the good 
things like roast pig, roast turkey and attendant fix- 
ings pass by without helping himself. Finally an 
immense platter heaped high with steaming golden 
roasted ears of corn appeared and the governor took 
six of these and piled them on his plate, then calmly 
proceeded to eat with apparent relish. 

Everybody watched him with great interest as 
he busied himself with this repast, which ordinarily 
would suffice for three men, and when in silence and 
without interruption he liad eaten the corn off the 




A narroiv escape from sliding doivn the side of a moun- 
tain. The Governor of the State of Colorado, at the 
right front ivheel, is assisting the pathfinder to keep the 
car from going over. The ivindlass, a homemade con- 
trivance, carried in the car, saved the day 



GOOD FELLOWS 



63 



six cobs he said that but for modesty's sake he felt 
almost like emulating the Irishman, who after eat- 
ing the corn off a cob passed it to the waiter with 
the request that the chef "put some more beans on 
this stick," to which remark one of those sitting near 
enough to hear it suggested that evidently the com- 
mittee had brought the governor to the wrong place, 
they should have brought him to the livery stable 
and not to the barbecue. This caused much merri- 
ment and the governor acknowledged the laugh was 
on him and confessed to an inordinate fondness for 
roasted corn, a fondness which he only dared indulge 
to the full when Mrs. Governor was not present to 
look after his diet. 



\.^;v!^^»^^'V< 




It is serious business to stop the momentum of the ear 
in the sucking quicksand beds of many Neiv Mexico 
streams. This picture ivas taken in the Rio Puerco before 
the construction of a liighiuay bridge over the treacherous 
river 



Saladito 

WHILE we were taking the first truck across 
New^ Mexico over what was later called 
''The Trail to Sunset" but is now part of 
the National Old Trails road, we arrived one even- 
ing at a long low one-story building, lonesomely 
located on the adobe plain between the Datil Moun- 
tains and Rito Quemado in the Western part of 
Socorro county. As we had had a battle with mud 
on the plains all day, the crew w^as dog tired and 
not in a mood for erecting tents and doing the work 
attendant upon preparing camp for the night, cook- 
ing food, washing dishes, making beds, etc. For 
this reason the sight of this lonesome habitation was 
very welcome. 

We found that the house was not the dw^elling 
of a family but a sort of Mexican apartment house, 
and that its name was Saladito, because it was 
located near a small salty spring. Six families occu- 
pied the structure. Their respective apartments, 
which consisted of two rooms each, were not inter- 
communicating which necessitated going outside in 
order to enter the apartment of one of the neigh- 
bors. I learned that the house, which by the way 
was not at all unusual in some remote parts of 
New Mexico, was built in this manner in order to 
provide better protection against possible danger of 
Indian attacks, which in not so far distant days 
was ever to be reckoned with and even today was 
used as a dwelling place by so many families be- 
cause the nearness of fellow human beings was a 
great comfort in such a remote region, especially 
64 



SALADITO 



65 



M^ 



ik:-: f'^ 




This desperate effort to spurt across a stream ivith quick- 
sand bottom ivas only partially successful as shoivn by 
the illustration beloiu 

as the men were away during the day attending 
their flocks of Angora goats from which they made 
a living. 

We were fortunate enough to induce one of the 
housewives, who was a childless widow, to take us 
in and allow us the use of one of her two rooms 
and also to cook our meals for us, using our pro- 
visions in their preparation, as none of us had suc- 
ceeded in acquiring the taste for Mexican cooking, 
usually strongly seasoned with red pepper. While 
our supper was being cooked 1 made a visit down 
along the line of the other apartments and found 
they contained thirty persons all told, none of whom 
could speak or understand a word of English. As 
1 had a nodding acquaintance with Spanish, I was 
able to put us on a friendly basis with the inhabi- 
tants and found to my surprise that we occupied a 
veritable Noah's Ark. That historic menagerie 



66 



SALADITO 



scarcely contained more species of animals than 
Saladlto. 

Aside from the thirty human beings, of whom 
the larger number were children of varying ages, I 
was able to enumerate two burros, eight dogs, five 
cats, sixteen chickens, nine pigs, one Angora ram 
and seven Angora kids, all occupying the rooms In 
common and seemingly getting along amicably. 

During the night it rained, and as New Mexico 
adobe Is some problem to negotiate when wet, even 
with a light car, let alone a seven-ton truck heavily 
loaded, I decided it was good policy to stay where 
we were until the country dried up, and thus we 
spent two days at Saladlto. We had not a dull 
moment. The people, their domestic life, their 
homes and points of view on ordinary everyday 
affairs, were as interesting to us as we were to 
them. Besides, w^e had a well-earned rest, which 




Motorists ivlio ha'ue had experience nvith Neiv Mexico 

ivet abode soil, all agree that it is the stickiest stuff on 

earth 



SALADITO 67 

put our crew in better trim to tackle the hardships 
ahead. As I knew the country from having trav- 
ersed it the year before, 1 realized that these hard- 
ships were greater than I dared divulge to the 
members of the crew, knowing that they would 
attack difficulties, that were not anticipated, with 
greater cheerfulness than those about which they 
had heard and thus allowed their imagination to 
magnify. Of course there were no roads, merely 
trails often too narrow for vehicular traffic. 



? 



ATNFINOCR 



^ AME11CAN AUTOMOMil ASSOff ATIOK 

-^r. a OFFICE OP r' ^ • '-' " u)s 

wrw rm* to St * 
*n fnmtisto r 






y 



Price Ciinyon 



I THINK I may justly claim the amception ot 
the Midhmd Trail, now called the Roosevelt 
National Highway, as 1 had carefully studied 
out its alignment as well as given it a n;mie two 
\ears before 1 undertook to trace it on the ground. 
With the co-o[>eration of the Denver Chamber of 
Commerce we cn^ssed the Rix^ky Mountains over 
Berthoud Pass. 11,300 feet high. This p;iss had 
never been crossed by an automobile before. Now 
it is done every day when free from snow. Eventu- 
ally we arrived at Grand Junction, near the Colo- 
rado-Ut:ili line, and here 1 found a addition which 
g;ive fixid for serious thouglit. 

The trip from Grand Junction, a prosperous city 
in the heart of a wonderful fruit belt, to Salt Lake 
City, three hundred miles distant, had been at- 
tempted on several occasions by motorists but had 
never been accvnnplished. the rough countr>- and 
absence of culverts or bridges across washes and 
ravines amipelling the shipment of the car for a 
aMisiderable distance in every case. Upon learning 
this and realizing that 1 should probably also fail 
to reach the objective, 1 arr;mged for a meeting of 
the chamber of commerce. At this meeting I ex- 
plained the imjx^rtance to the city of being located 
on a transcontinental trunk highway and especially 
on one with so mimy scenic attractions as the Mid- 
land Trail. 1 then called for volunteers to acaim- 
p;my me to Salt Lake City in their car, suggesting 
that three or four husky fellows ixvupy each car to 
enable us to surmount all obstacles by slieer ph\^ical 

68 



I'RK 1 «.\\NM)\' 



(/) 




Our (tir tens t/ir f.',.'.: '.,: .;,..>.v ll,;i'..::.J l\i.y.^ .^: . .• /.. 
Rocky Mounidiris, lifst of Dt'n^wr. T/ir tUvation is 
II3O0 jcft tin J the summit of the pass comes I'cry near 
hcitit) the top of the ivorlJ, heituj probably the loftiest 
trunk line motor route in the uni'Z'crse 



strciiiitli, ;iiul thus \c:\vn the real C(Mulitii)ii ot the 
propciscd \ouXc aiul anati^e tor means to eliminate 
its drawbacks. 

In a tew moments crews tor ten cars \ ohinteereil. 
anil this speaks vohunes tor the enterprise and in- 
trepidity of these red-hhioded folks of the West. 
After a day's dela\ to i:et ready we started out. 
It was ten da\s befi>re a national election and all 
these men expected to be back in their home city 
to vote for President. After surmoiintini:; almost 
inconceivable difficulties, at times carrying: cars 
bodih across deep ra\ ines or acrt>ss flooded rivers 
and battling with sticky adobe mud caused by two 
days' rain, besides havinii; serious breakdowns of 
almost every one of the eleven cars, we finally 
reached the town of Price. 



70 



PRICE CANYON 



A few miles beyond this place lies Price Canyon, 
through which a road once passed, but now the 
D. & R. G. Railroad occupied the former bed of 
the road, and, as no other trail had been constructed 
through the canyon over the sixteen miles from 
Helper to Colton, it was necessary for the cars to 
travel around through an exceedingly rough coun- 
try nearly sixty miles to reach from one of these 
stations to the other. As I w^anted the route located 
through Price Canyon, arrangements were made to 
furnish me with a guide for hiking through while 
the cars made the long trip around. 

This guide was a sorry specimen of humanity 
who, as a hanger-on at the town saloons, had 
through dissipation become so weakened that by the 
time we had gone some nine or ten miles of the 
sixteen, was about played out from the exertions 
necessary to get over the rough sides of the steep 




A sudden cloudburst, occurring frequently miles aiuay, 

ivill make raging torrents of ordinarily dry "'washes" 

in Utah 



PRICE CANYON 71 

canyon. Here he sat down on a boulder and en- 
treated me to leave him to his fate, as he had all 
his days been a worthless good-for-nothing and de- 
served no better end, and, anyway, did not care 
but would just as soon pass in his checks now as 
later. In other words, he had not only lost his 
stamina but his courage, and was willing to give up. 

After considerable persuasion and coaxing he, 
however, consented to make further efforts, and, 
with a little assistance now and then, managed to 
make, in a slow and stumbling way, another few 
miles. Unfortunately we had here a rather grue- 
some experience. We saw a decomposed body hang- 
ing from a tree, evidently of some unfortunate who 
in despair had committed suicide. This entirely 
unnerved my companion, and shortly beyond the 
place where we had passed the hanging man, sway- 
ing back and forth in the wind, he refused entirely 
to make any further efforts, and no coaxing nor 
even threats had any effect on him. He simply sat 
down on the ground and refused to rise or pull 
himself together. 

Of course I could not leave the poor wretch 
there, as it was turning dark and he was too poorly 
clad to stand the cold of the night in his alcohol- 
soaked condition. There was nothing else to do 
but try to carry or drag him along, and this I under- 
took to do. While he was a man of slight physique, 
he began to weigh very heavily after we had pro- 
ceeded a short distance in this manner, especially 
as I also am not of very heavy frame, and I was 
compelled to make frequent stops for rest. The 
last mile into Colton I was no longer able to carry 



72 



PRICK CANYON 



him, but dragged him along, a few feet at a time. 
between stops for breath. 

^^^len we finally reached the steps of the little 
frame building which constituted the hotel. 1 was 
almost as near in as my burden, but the sight of the 
cars parked around the building cheered me up 
wonderfully. 1 found my company of scouts dis- 
cussing plans to enter the canyon on a search for 
us as I opened the door and entered the hotel office. 
Unfortunately the little town was dry. I say un- 
fortunately, because in this case the specific needed 
for my guide was a generous dose of his accustomed 
stimulant more than any other remedy. After 
searching the town over we finally unearthed a small 
bottle of whiskey, and when a tumblerful of the 
raw poison was forced down his throat he began 
to give signs of life. In an hour's time he seemed 
as good as new and with a more rosy view on life — 




Getting across East fin VuiJ: ;....> /. ■ ^lay oiving to many 
narrozi: but steep zvas/ies. The s/ioi'el brigade ivas gen- 
erally kept busy 



PRICE CANYON 



73 



in fact, was not at all disposed toward quitting this 
mundane sphere just then nor in the near future. 

When our party eventually reached Salt Lake 
City we had spent twelve days covering the three 
hundred miles from Grand Junction, and it was 
with genuine regret that I parted with those fine 
fellows, ''the boys of 1912." 

1 had the satisfaction within a year to pilot my 
car over a new highway through Price Canyon, 
located on the route over which 1 had made the 
preliminary investigation, and on that trip I trav- 
eled from Grand Junction to Salt Lake City in two 
days, an evidence of the work which had been done 
during the year to eliminate the worst places on 
this entire route. 




■%^'',M**"*',-^- 




^ 







Fording this river in Utah ivas found a comparatively 
easy task, Giving to a firm, gravelly bottom 



Pan, My Pal 

PAN is a blue-blooded aristocrat with a family 
tree as old and a pedigree as unblemished as 
the proudest and highest in the "tight little 
island" where Burke's peerage is the main guide to 
"Who is Who." His ancestors had carried their 
blue ribbons and bow knots as proudly as any duke 
his crown and ermine cloak. Besides, no ermine 
cloak could be more white and flawless than the 
white coat which Pan wears. Unlike many a scion 
of nobility, Pan is true as steel and the best friend 
a man could ever have, his unselfishness and devo- 
tion is something beautiful and inspiring and his 
faithfulness beyond doubt. Pan is a "regular 
fellow," smart, active and ever alert. 

Pan is a wire-haired fox terrier from the Sabine 
Kennels, down in Texas. His sire was transplanted 
to the banks of the Sabine from England, after 
having won pre-eminent honors at the most impor- 
tant bench shows, but now when he wistfully looks 
towards the East with homesick longings he only 
sees the Louisiana shore on the other side of the 
river. Pan is a twin ; his brother is called Peter, 
and the pair were named thus in honor of Maud 
Adams, who undoubtedly never knew of their ex- 
istence, and thus missed a real pleasure. 

When I first saw Pan he was romping around 
in a grass-carpeted, wire-netted enclosure with 
nearly two hundred playfellows, and a wonderfully 
bright and lively picture they made. It was my task 
that morning to choose from among this kaleido- 
scopic jumble of jumping, scampering young dog- 

74 



'AN, MY PAL 



75 



Hesh an individual which appealed to me the 
strongest as most likely to become a boon com- 
panion and real comrade on the road. A kindly 
fairy guided my judgment and Pan became our pal 
on many a transcontinental motor hike. He shares 
with us the good and the bad, is patient and wise, 
always sleeps with one eye open and an ear ever 
cocked, is an apt scholar, proud of what he has 
learned, and never did anything deserving chastise- 
ment but once — and then he escaped it. 




Pan, our pal, ivho "knoivs America," from actual observa- 
tion, better than the greater majority of its people 



The first day on the road Pan suffered intensely 
from sea-sickness, or rather car-sickness, and refused 
to be comforted and coddled. In all his six months 
of existence he had had no such experience, and he 
looked at us reproachfully and miserably with his 
pleading eyes. However, in a couple of days he 
began to take interest in his fellow passenger and 
to notice his swiftly changing surroundings. In a 



76 PAN, MY PAL 

week he acted like a seasoned globe trotter, devel- 
oped an enormous appetite and soon began, as we 
pulled up at a hotel entrance for a night stop, to 
look at the hostelry with a speculative eye, trying 
to figure out in advance if any objection would be 
offered to his sharing our room with us. We be- 
came so fond of the cute little runt that when some 
landlord, after reasonable pleadings, remained ada- 
mant in his objections to dogs, we would seek some 
other hotel or even go to some other town rather 
than leave our tiny friend alone in the garage for 
the night. 

When Pan was a little over a year old he had 
traveled far and wide and became as car wise as an 
insurance adjuster. At this time we again hap- 
pened to visit his native State. Somewhere near 
the edge of the Staked Plain, in the Panhandle, 
some good-roads enthusiasts presented our driver 
with a pair of young opossums, which he kept in 
the pocket of one of the front doors of the car, 
unknown to me. The little things were only some 
five inches long, exclusive of their prehensile tails, 
and were quite tame. Pan's continuous interest in 
that corner of the car aroused my curiosity and I 
soon, of course, discovered the cause. The black, 
bead-like eyes and pig-like snouts of the little pets 
did not appeal to our party, but as the driver prom- 
ised to ship them to his home when we reached 
Colorado, we raised no objection to carrying them 
that far. Not so Pan; he had to be continually 
restrained from making a raid on that door pocket. 

At Colorado Springs we were the guests of some 
friends, and here of course Pan had to make the 
best of his quarters in the stable. In the garage, 



PAN, MY PAL 77 

next door to the stable, the opossums were kept in 
a box placed on a shelf. The next morning after 
our arrival the driver announced the disappearance 
of his pets. He had found the slats covering the 
box slightly displaced and the opossums gone. A 
rigid search of the premises failed to discover their 
whereabouts, but I noticed that Pan tried somewhat 
ostentatiously to look unconcerned — in fact, so much 
so that my suspicion was aroused. 

As we started to leave the stable, apparently 
satisfied that the 'possums were not there, I seemed 
to note a smug look of satisfaction on Pan's face 
and determined to return shortly. After a lapse 
of an hour I came back stealthily and, upon jerking 
the door suddenly open, found the little rascal play- 
ing with a 'possum tail as a kitten with a ball of 
twine. He knew that he had been caught red- 
handed and ran to a corner, whining for mercy. 
That was the time he deserved corporal punishment 
but didn't get it. It was not in my heart to give 
him anything stronger than a round scolding in 
appreciation of his cunning in hiding the remains of 
his victims from our view when we first inspected 
the stable. The 'possums had escaped from their 
box and, prowling around, had gone through a drain 
into the stable and here met their end. 

As I am writing this, Pan, now a staid world-wise 
dog, with the experience of four years of roaming 
over the highways of the country showing in his wise, 
kind eyes, sits at my feet and is probably wondering 
what I am writing about. I can wish my friends 
nothing better than the good fortune to acquire a 
pal like Pan. 



Close Connection 

BETWEEN Salt Lake City, Utah, and Ely, 
Nevada, the Lincoln Highway and the 
Midland Trail, now the Roosevelt Na- 
tional Highway, coincide for about three hundred 
miles. The country between these two cities is 
most bleak and forbidding, albeit that it has, like 
all desert regions, a certain fascination of its own. 
The Great Salt Lake Desert, formerly called the 
Great American Desert and the Sevier Desert, be- 
sides several desert mountain ranges between the 
two cities, made it a matter of great concern to 
locate the route not where the best but the least 
bad condition prevailed. In hunting for this least 
bad route I traversed all the possible options avail- 
able north and south of the lake, and am probably 
the only man who has covered them all. 

While the route as now located has been so far 
improved as not only to rob it of any possible danger 
but even make traveling over it a matter of merely 
covering ground and enjoying the opportunity to 
view this arid section without worry or apprehen- 
sion, it was entirely another matter to roam through 
this region in a motor car while searching for the 
line of least resistance for a highway, water being 
the constant anxiety of our party. 

On one of these trips we went south from Ely 
via Newhouse to Milford, Utah, and made this 
little town without serious hardships. From Mil- 
ford our route lay northeast across a corner of the 
Sevier Desert, and we learned that there was no 
water for about forty-five miles. As a strong wind 

78 



CLOSE CONNECTION 79 

blew from the southwest, thus compelling us to 
travel with it, we were somewhat apprehensive in 
regard to having our motor overheat, and conse- 
quently loaded our car with extra water containers, 
so that on starting out we carried an extra supply 
of twelve gallons of water for our radiator, surely 
enough, as we thought, to cover all contingencies. 
My wife, the mechanic and I made up the party 
of three. 

We had not gone far from Milford, traveling in 
a cloud of our own dust carried on the breeze at 
about the same speed as our own, when our motor 
ran hot. With only slight concern we stopped and 
filled the radiator. After a while we had to stop 
and repeat this performance every little while, and 
eventually, some thirty miles out, our extra water 
supply ran so low that I realized we would only 
have enough for possibly another five miles, and 
that would be ten miles short of the place where 
we had been told we would find water. In fact, it 
might be further than ten miles, as the estimate 
of distances in those days, when motor cars were 
rare, often was a matter of mere guesswork. 

Before we had covered even the five miles we 
were entirely out of water and the engine was boil- 
ing hot. We were compelled to stop. From a 
nearby knoll I surveyed the entire surrounding 
country. There was nothing in sight but sandy 
wastes with black lava hills jutting out here and 
there. Things looked indeed gloomy, as being 
stalled in that arid country, waterless, was really 
more than serious. 

My wife, who from long experience in roughing 
it never loses heart, then hit upon a bright idea. In 



80 CLOSE CONNECTION 

a box in the tonneau we had six bottles of carefully 
packed and much treasured claret of a choice vint- 
age, made and presented to us by a friend in Cali- 
fornia who owned a fine vineyard. Friend wife 
generously offered to sacrifice the wine and accord- 
ingly the box was opened and the contents of the 
bottles poured into the radiator, which was hardly 
more thirsty than ourselves. Nevertheless, we re- 
frained from sharing even a tiny drop with our 
motor, which took it all and could have used more 
when the last bottle was emptied. 

With new heart we cranked up and proceeded, 
the motor doing very well on its unaccustomed diet. 
However, in a couple of miles we were again com- 
pelled to stop from the same old cause, and we were 
now without further resources. About a hundred 
yards ahead was a slight elevation, and in order to 
take another look around — which, however, I felt 
in my heart would be entirely useless, I climbed up 
the slight grade, and to my utter astonishment there 
appeared less than another hundred feet away — a 
pool of water. 

I rubbed my eyes and looked again, to make sure 
it was not one of those cruel desert mirages. But 
no, there it was. True, it was murky and dark 
green, but it was water, really wet water. It 
seemed too good to be believed all at once. The 
liquid was unfit to drink, and though we suffered 
keenly from thirst we were compelled to confine 
ourselves to filling radiator and the extra contain- 
ers. Some twelve miles further and we were out 
of the desert and among cedar-grown hills, and here 
we found the ranch house of a Mormon, where a 
bubbling spring of cool water made us all forget 



CLOSE CONNECTION 



81 



the past danger of the day. The ranchman, about 
whose house some dozen children of very nearly 
the same age were playing and staring at us with 
a curiosity indicating the rarity of visits from people 
of the outside, assured us that he had never known 
water to remain for any length of time in any of 
the many depressions of the lava-strewn region 
where we found it, and assured us there had been 
no rain in the region for months. Yet we found it. 




Deadly Figures 



NEXT to being asked what tires I use and 
can recommend, the question probably most 
often put to me is how many miles I 
have traveled in my many years of pathfinding. 
My answTr is invariably that I do not know, though 
I have most likely traveled more different (note 
the different) miles on rubber tires thpn any man 
in the world. This I believe to be true. 

When anyone makes an offhand statement that 
he has traveled two or three or four or even five 
hundred thousand miles, he should not be taken too 
seriously. Just apply the yardstick to these figures 




The "Pull the State out of the mud" campaign in Ohio 

and Michigan had ample justification and is being pushed 

ivith excellent effect 

82 



DEADLY FIGURES 83 

and note how they dwindle. I noted in the press 
only recently that a comparatively young man had 
traveled about eight hundred thousand miles in fif- 
teen years and that he hoped to cover a round 
million, or a distance equal to forty times around 
the earth at the equator. 

Let us stop for a moment and analyze these 
figures. Eight hundred thousand miles in fifteen 
years makes fifty-three thousand three hundred and 
thirty-three miles a year, or over one hundred and 
forty-one miles a day for every day in the year — 
Sunday, holiday and weekday. If a day should be 
missed it would be necessary to double up the next 
day or to cover over two hundred and eighty-two 
miles. To do this summer and winter, rain or 
shine, mud or snow, for fifteen consecutive years is, 
of course, preposterous. That anyone has covered 
one-half that distance in that time is not impossible, 
but hardly within the range of probability. 

I confine myself to the safe statement that I have 
made more motor trips across the United States, 
East and West, North and South, than any other 
man, and that these trips were mostly over different 
routes. 



The Black River Crossing 

ON THE "Trail-to-Sunset" — later called the 
Apache Trail because it leads through the 
Apache Indian Reservation and connects 
Springerville, Arizona, and the National Old Trails 
route with Phoenix via I'ort Apache, Globe and 
Roosevelt Dam — the Black River separates the 
White Mountains from the Natanes Range. 

When 1 arrived at Fort Apache, in the spring of 
1911, with the first transcontinental truck and its 
crew, after spending eight days covering forty-two 
miles across the White Mountain plateau, we were 
all of us about ready for a rest. In discussing the 
trail across the Black River, some twenty miles 
south of the army post, with the commanding officer, 
I learned that the river was at flood stage and that 
three army wagons and a company of soldiers, re- 
turning from the Mexican border, had been in camp 
on the other side of the river for a week waiting 
for the water to subside in order to be able to ford 
across. 

As I had crossed at this place the previous fall 
and was acquainted with the lay of the land at the 
crossing and also because 1 felt that I knew what 
my crew could accomplish with the truck, I made 
the proposition to the commanding officer that if 
he would furnish me with a troop of cavalry, twenty 
strong, I would guarantee to get his army wagons 
across after having crossed with the truck. He 
readily accepted my proposition and next morning 
I learned that the troop had started out at daylight 
and would be at the crossing when we arrived. 

84 



THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING 85 




The first transcontinental truck crossing the plateau of 

the ffhite mountains in the lands of the Apaches, 

Arizona, at an elevation of 9000 ft. 

The trail leads through a very rough and broken 
country, the former stronghold of the notorious 
chief Geronimo and his band of murderous Apaches, 
where plenty remote and secure hiding places 
abounded. Our progress over the twisting, uneven 
and often steep trail was naturally slow and it was 
the middle of the afternoon before we arrived at the 
river, where we found the cavalry encamped. 

The Black River is a swift mountain stream and 
only some seventy-five feet wide. Upon looking 
on the racing, leaping and dancing current I confess 
that I felt somewhat uncertain that we would be 
able to make our words good. However, the officer 
of the post like a good sportsman had called my 
bluff, though when made it was not intended as 
such, so there was nothing to do but make the 
attempt. The truck was a seven-ton affair, as big 
as a furniture van, and was heavily loaded, hence 



86 THli BLACK RIVER CROSSING 

1 scarcely feared that it would be swept off its feet 
— or rather wheels. But it was difficult to gauge 
the depth of the stream on account of the swift 
current, and besides I knew that several large 
boulders were in the river-bed, and these of course 
could not be seen for the same reason. 

One of the cavalrymen volunteered to cross with 
a thin clothesline, swimming his horse across. The 
animal was instantly swept of¥ its feet and landed 
on the opposite shore more than five hundred feet 
down stream. After coming up to a point opposite 
the truck the trooper attempted with help of the 
soldiers at the army wagons to pull a heavy rope 
with block and tackle arrangement across. The 
raging current, getting a good hold of the four 
strands of rope, threatened to pull the entire crew 
into the water before it was pulled half way across. 
The spray spouted many feet in the air when the 
current struck the rope. 

A pair of army mules were hitched to the thin 
line, which in addition was run around a nearby 
tree. This accomplished the end desired and the 
block and tackle was made fast to a big tree. Four 
mules were hitched on and slowly the big truck 
nosed its way into the water. Gradually, inch by 
inch, it crept across, luckily missing the boulders, 
though it partly climbed one of them and slid off. 
These were anxious moments. When the vehicle 
had reached midstream the top of the radiator was 
barely visible above the water. The magneto and 
carburetor had, of course, been removed. 

Upon nearing the far bank the ascent was quite 
steep and the water deepest. The mules pulled 
their best with every ounce of strength on the 



THE BLACK RlVJiR CROSSING 87 

hames, the rope creaked and groaned and every man 
held his breath. When finally the truck stood on 
the other hank, high and dry, the crossing accom- 
plished successfully, there was a release of pent-up 
feelings and a lusty cheer issued from every throat. 
As for myself it was a moment of supreme satis- 
faction, this successfully having accomplished some- 
thing which had been supposed to be undoable. 

But the rub was that I was still on the wrong 
side of the river, as I had remained to take photo- 
graphs of the task in hand. There was nothing else 
to do but emulate the trooper who had swum his 
horse across. Bidding a hearty goodby to the com- 
pany and mounting one of the horses, I plunged in 
with a camera held high above my head in each 
hand. The well-trained horse seemed to know just 
what was expected of him and pluckily fought the 




The first transcontinental truck, stemming the sivift cur- 
rent of the Black Ri'ver in the Apache country of Arizona. 
The difficulties of the crossing ivere much aggravated 
by the presence of large boulders in the river bed 



88 THE BLACK RIVER CROSSING 

grasping current, while I had quite a job to stay 
on with the water up to my waist at times and both 
arms high in the air. 

When the other bank was safely attained there 
remained yet the task of getting the army wagons 
across. This was accomplished by loading them 
heavily with boulders and reversing the operation 
used with the truck, while the soldiers swam the 
mules across. Just as night fell the work w^as done. 
We went into camp where the soldiers had been 
encamped so long and the campfire of the troops 
soon lighted up the opposite shore. By daybreak 
the bugle sounded and with shouts of godspeed we 
parted company in opposite directions. 

Today there is a bridge at this crossing, but al- 
most every spring flood of this turbulent stream 
causes serious damage to it and entails extensive 
repairs. At least two bridges have been swept away 
by the flood from this location. 



Just Fro^s 

Ar OiNE time, while traveling over what was 
later named the George Washington High- 
^ way in South Dakota, I encountered a most 
curious phenomenon. I had heard that once in a 
hlue moon such incidents happened in various sec- 
tions of the prairie states, but had never before, 
nor have I since, experienced anything like it. 

As we motored along a natural prairie road an 
immense black cloud was racing fast towards us, 
portending one of those cloudbursts which so often 
visit the prairie country at any uncertain time dur- 
ing the hot summer months. On meeting the blast 
of cold wind which indicated that the downpour 
might start any moment, we hastened to get out the 
curtains and fasten them on the car. But as almost 
everyone who has had occasion to do a similar stunt 
in a jiffy will know, the right curtains got in the 
wrong place and vice versa, so that by the time 
we had them properly sorted and really were on the 
way to do the thing right, the storm struck us. 

We had to abandon the effort and hopped into 
the car to get under cover. Here we huddled, hold- 
ing the curtains before us as shields against the fierce 
slanting rain which literally fell in sheets while 
flashes of lightning played about us continuously. 
These sudden storms on the open prairie are no 
jokes, and as no one knows where lightning may 
strike we certainly spent an anxious fifteen minutes. 
Shortly the storm had passed over. Our cover 
had been insufficient and in spite of our attempts 
to protect ourselves we were wet as drowned rats. 

89 



90 JUST FROGS 

The whole inside of the car was also wet and full 
of hopping, wriggling little black things which gave 
us all a creepy feeling. They proved to be tiny 
frogs about the size of a man's thumbnail. In a 
few minutes the sun appeared and we saw the road 
ahead and the ground in all directions just black 
with little frogs, which jumped, lively and frisky, 
in all directions. There were millions upon millions 
of them. It was impossible to set a foot down 
without crushing dozens of the creatures. 

After putting on skid chains we proceeded slowly 
and for five miles saw frogs as far as the eye could 
see in all directions. Then all at once we were 
out of this area of animate things and it felt almost 
like reaching shore after a voyage through turbulent 
seas. For every revolution of the wheels our tires 
crushed hundreds of frogs and we must have killed 
millions of them before reaching what may be 
termed dry ground. 

The theory of local people who have seen similar 
phenomena is that these frogs are sucked up out of 
a swampy region by a waterspout and carried a 
great distance, possibly a hundred or more miles, 
before some atmospheric condition is encountered 
\^'hich causes the precipitation. It certainly was an 
eerie experience. 



Diamondbacks 

HAVING motored into so many remote 
regions, far from habitations, in all of 
our Western, Southwestern and Southern 
States, I have seen thousands of rattlesnakes of 
many different varieties, from the almost black 
swamp rattler of Florida to the small sidewinder 
of the Colorado desert, in California; from the 
green rattler of the Staked Plains to the pale, dusty 
specimen of western Kansas, and the vicious kind 
in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico; even 
the rock "varmint" of Nevada and the kind that 
the Hopi Indians — who seemingly are immune 
against their poison — carry in their mouths during 
the weird snake dances. But, in my opinion, the 
Texas diamondback rattlesnake, found in the mes- 
quite chaparral along the lower reaches of the Rio 
Grande Valley, takes first prize both for size and 
general cussed viciousness. 

At one time while I was traveling a few miles 
back from the Rio Grande, going from Eagle Pass 
to La Pryor, we were following a lonely trail 
through the chaparral when, on account of the sand 
and general heavy condition of the going, dusk over- 
took us while we were yet many miles from our 
destination for the night. It was an unusually mild 
evening, following the first really warm day of the 
early spring. We had seen no snakes at all during 
many days of travel in that country and assumed 
that they were still hibernating. 

As the day was waning we saw our first snake 
and thought nothing of it. Shortly we ran across 

91 



92 



DIAISIONDBACKS 



another in the middle of the trail, and from then 
on for the next hour saw more rattlesnakes than 
we ever had in all our lifetime before. They all 
seemed to be in the trail, and we drove over and 
crushed several hundreds of them. The\^ all were 
of unusually great size, full-grown specimens, and 
evidently had all emerged from their winter quar- 
ters at the same time, called forth by the warm 
spring day. 

One particular chap was of such great size that 
I stepped out of the car to kill him for his skin. 
He retreated to a small bush near the edge of the 
trail and fought back fiercely, making repeated 
strikes at the heavy stick with which I belabored 
him. It was my intention to injure his skin as 
little as possible, and it took some time to dispatch 
him, as he seemed to have more than the nine lives 
traditionallv allotted to the cat. However, he 




*-=^-r«r^4ij^. 



The mesquite chaparral of the Rio Grande border in 

Texas is the home of the diamond-hack rattlesnake, the 

largest of this species of poisonous reptiles 



DIAMONDBACKS 93 

finally had to give up, and 1 slung him on the 
running board while his jaws were yet spasmodically 
making their plucky, dying attempts to open and 
strike. 

Next morning I had a Mexican skin him. This 
was done by cutting off his head and tail and turn- 
ing his skin inside out, peeling it off the carcass. 
The skin was then reversed, the tail end tied with 
a string, and the snake's beautifully marked cover 
filled with cornmeal to absorb all the moisture from 
its inside. Finally, the head opening was tied se- 
curely with a string, and the affair, looking like 
a huge sausage, was thrown across some of the 
baggage in the tonneau. I noticed the Mexican 
carefully buried the broad, arrow-shaped head of 
the snake in order to remove the danger of anyone 
stepping on it and possibly being poisoned by its 
fangs. 

When we pulled up to the door of one of the 
hotels in San Antonio, one of the negro bellhops 
solicitously came out to help remove the baggage. 
His eyes fairly bulged and his complexion turned 
almost pale with fright when he reached in for the 
suitcases and his hand came in contact with the filled 
snakeskin. With a howl he jumped back and no 
argument could induce him to again approach the 
car until I had removed the "snake," To tell the 
truth, this descendant of the tempter of the Garden 
of Eden did look mighty lifelike until one noticed 
the absence of its terminal extremities. 

It was a real Texas diamondback, the pattern 
on its back being most clearly marked in black, 
gray and white, a really rattling big rattler. 



The Top of the Cascades 

FOR some years after the advent of the auto- 
mobile the State of Washington, as far as 
concerned motor vehicle traffic, was to all 
practical purposes almost like two different hemi- 
spheres. The great "Inland Empire," as the East 
Washingtonians proudly, and with justice, like to 
call their part of the State, was practically isolated 
from the Puget Sound counties by the Cascade 
range of mountains, except for a rough trail with 
steep grades through the dense forest which clad 
Snoqualmie Pass. This corduroyed and slab-lum- 
bered trail was in fact so exceedingly difficult to 
negotiate and its passage attended with such hazards 
and strain on the heavy, low-powered motor cars 
of that day that the motorists who crossed the range 
in a season could almost be counted on the fingers 
of one hand. In addition to the difficulty of the 
pass, the necessity of ferrying five miles along the 
shores of Lake Ketchelus was another deterrent, as 
the ferry service, intended for the limited horse- 
drawn traffic which found its way over this route, 
was very primitive and uncertain. 

This was the condition when 1 laid out what I 
called the Northwest Trail from Chicago to Seattle, 
which route is now called the National Parks High- 
way, because it gives access by short side trips from 
the main trunk line to three national parks — the 
Yellowstone, Glacier and Mount Rainier. After 
plowing through deep dust, a sort of volcanic ash, 
in Central Washington, crossing the apple belt of 
the Columbia River country, and making the pas- 

94 




The saivtooth peaks of the Cascade Mountains, at tlie 

summit of Snoquaimie Pass in Washington, make this 

region one of the most rugged in the United States 



96 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES 

sage over Blewett Pass, the first car to accomplish 
this feat — and it was some difficult task, with the 
steep grades and many unbridged boulder-strewn 
crossings of Peshastin Creek — we finally arrived at 
the shores of Lake Ketchelus. 

We rang the bell which was placed here to call 
the ferry from its ''home port," some five miles 
distant, the sound being perfectly audible even that 
far away in this silent solitude, and, in fact, much 
intensified by the echo which was thrown back as 
from a sounding-board by the forest-clad, steep 
shores. After nearly two hours' wait we managed 
with great care to embark the car on the none too 
safe-appearing old scow which, in connection with a 
tiny gasolene-motored launch, constituted the ferry. 
This ferry, by the way, was made unnecessary the 
following year by reason of the construction of a 
highway along the shore of the lake. On disem- 
barking we set out at once up the trail towards the 
summit of the Cascades, which like saw-teeth 
pierced the sky ahead of us. The ascent was fairly 
gradual, with occasional steep pitches, but the trail 
itself was exceedingly rough and narrow, winding 
in and out among giant pines and firs. 

In the middle of one of these steep places we 
encountered an old man who was endeavoring to 
coax an emaciated old horse to exert another ounce 
of effort in attempting to drag a dilapidated buggy 
up the trail. The bony structure of the horse was 
so evident under its gray, mangy skin that he ap- 
peared more like a skeleton of a horse than one of 
flesh and blood. The buggy was held together with 
generous applications and sundry bandages of baling 
wire. All in all, the whole outfit — man, horse and 



THE TOP OF THE CASCADES 97 

buggy — was about as nearly played out as any 
outfit I had ever seen in all my travels. 

As neither kicks, curses nor kind words seemed 
to have any effect on the poor brute in the shafts, 
and as it was impossible in that particular spot to 
drive around this archaic assembly, we stopped the 
car and offered to help. Putting shoulders to the 
wheels, we pushed the buggy as well as the horse 
along for a couple of feet, when the worn equine, 
evidently thinking it was time for a real siesta, or 
possibly figuring that we might carry him as well 
as the buggy to the top of the grade, lay down in 
the shafts with a thud, breaking at the same time 
one of the shafts and the single-tree. Unhitching 
the ropes, which served for harness, and backing the 
buggy, we fixed up the damage with wire, with 




Volcanic ash, ivhich forms tlie soil of the lonver Yakima 
River country in Washington, may be great for raising 
crops hut, being almost gritless like flour, is a 'very unsat- 
isfactory material for roads. Great clouds of floating 
dust hover for hours over the country after the passage 
of a motor car during dry iveatlier 



98 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES 

which the buggy was principally loaded, and then 
tried to induce the horse to realize that it was 
entirely unethical to slumber in the middle of the 
trail, at least out of hours. But he refused to 
understand our various arguments, unconcernedly 
stretching out on his side and continuing his visit 
to horse heaven, the old gentleman in the meantime 
insisting that his faithful friend was neither balky 
nor worn out — no, sir, no more than he was him- 
self — but merely a little tired. And when he be- 
came tired, he usually took a rest. 

As the old man's appearance seemed to point to 
an age of close to four score years, and conveyed 
no indication of prosperity or means of feeding 
either himself or his horse, this assurance was not 
very encouraging. However, his story proved in- 
teresting, as he told of his having traveled all the 
way from Texas with his outfit; had spent seven 
months on the trail and was headed for Canada, 
where he had heard there were fine chances to get 
free land and opportunities were offered to "get 
ahead" for anyone that was strong and willing to 
work. He presented such an illuminating example 
of optimism and undiluted pluck that we were forced 
to gaze at the man in wonder and admiration. 

Meanwhile, the horse had evidently figured out 
that there was nothing further to be gained by 
playing 'possum, so he struggled to his feet and 
started wabbling ahead, and we wisely let him go 
to get him out of the way. Hauling and pushing 
the buggy to the top, we found him calmly waiting 
to be again tied to the shafts. He positively seemed 
to enjoy the support of the two wooden braces, as 
they furnished him something to lean on. With a 




The patlifiyider, passing through the giant forest of 

Snoqnnlmie Pass, Washington, made his nvay ever 

atrocious corduroy roads like these, noiv replaced by an 

excellent highway 



100 THE TOP OF THE CASCADES 

generous donation from our commissary, we left 
the old gentleman and his horse with the best wishes 
for a successful ending of his adventure. I can 
almost assert that I saw the old joker of a horse 
slyly wink at me as I turned in the car to wave 
a final greeting to his master as we forged ahead. 
How on earth this outfit negotiated the grades that 
we found farther up the trail has always been a 
mystery to me. 

After battling with the rotten corduroy road, 
which by reason of the fact that the sun never pene- 
trated through the dense tops of the immense forest 
trees was everywhere slippery and slimy, we 
eventually found good going at North Bend and 
arrived at Seattle safely. The photographs which 
I had taken to show the condition of this sole route 
for vehicle connection between the east and west 
part of the state was so convincing, when repro- 
duced in the Seattle papers, accompanied by a story 
of the state of affairs and the importance of having 
them remedied, that a movement was set on foot 
to effect necessary improvements. Two years sub- 
sequently an $800,000 highway with easy grades 
throughout carried the increasing motor-car traffic 
through Snoqualmie Pass. This year and next, 
1920 and 1921, the highway will be paved with 
concrete. 



In the Bighorns 

SOME years ago I made a survey of the Black 
and Yellow Trail, which is a direct cross- 
country route from Minneapolis to the Yel- 
lowstone National Park, and gets its name because 
it runs through the Black Hills of South Dakota 
and Yellowstone Park. It crosses the northern part 
of Wyoming and in this region traverses a rough 
and unsettled country, running across a region of 
so-called "bad lands," besides crossing the Bighorn 
mountains and the Powder and Bighorn rivers. 

We traveled with two cars, a large one for carry- 
ing passengers and their personal baggage, and a 
small, light car to carry tents and general camp 
equipment. We encountered considerable rough 
going in South Dakota, at one time passing through 
a large section where dry farming had been at- 
tempted by many settlers who had been induced by 
unscrupulous land agents to buy land at low rates 
and on long payments, only to be compelled to give 
up the hopeless task of raising crops after several 
years of deprivation and hardships. They had 
simply left for other parts, abandoning their equity 
in the lands and all improvements. Their aban- 
doned dugouts or small shacks dotted this region 
and remained as monuments to their brave efforts 
and blasted ambitions to be self-supporting and pro- 
ducing owners of homes. These were indeed monu- 
ments of sadness, failure and despair. 

Near Huron we passed a large ranch owned by 
a half-breed Indian, on which he raised buffaloes. 
The American bison, even those kept on fenced 

101 



102 IN THE BIGHORNS 

ranches, had become so scarce since their extermina- 
tion as wild game, that specimens were in much 
demand for zoological gardens all over the country, 
and this particular herd had so dwindled that their 
owner desired to dispose of those remaining, some 
fifty animals. They were offered to the United 
States Government, but, through parsimony, red 
tape, or lack of foresight, or possibly a mixture of 
all three, the negotiations were so prolonged that 
the owner of the herd accepted an offer for them 
from the Canadian Government, and these splendid, 
slow-breeding animals were thus lost to our country. 

Leaving Deadwood, in the Black Hills, where the 
surrounding rich mining region has much besides 
the tales of the exploits of Deadwood Dick and the 
experiences of the Deadwood stage to make it fa- 
mous, we traveled via the poetically named town of 
Sundance, reminiscent of Indian ceremonies, and 
across the ''bad lands," a region where nothing but 
sage brush grows — and often not even that — to 
Buffalo, and then entered the Bighorn mountains 
after descending the steep grade of Crazy Woman's 
Hill, on the creek of the same euphonious name. 

Everything went well and we expected to reach 
Ten Sleep — another illuminating Indian name, one 
sleep meaning a day's travel — by night. As the 
trail was very dim we hesitated at one place, where 
it forked and either trail showed about the same 
usage, or rather lack of usage; and, as most often 
is the case, he who hesitates is lost. Thus we chose 
the wrong fork, and after ascending and descending 
several steep moraines which tested our cars to the 
utmost, we finally attained the crest of the moun- 
tains, where my aneroid showed an altitude of 9,500 



IN THE BIGHORNS 103 

feet. It was now near dusk and I realized we had 
taken the wrong fork, some fifteen miles back. To 
make matters worse, as we were struggling out of 
a small swampy spot the strain became too great for 
metal to stand and our rear live axle snapped. 

Here was a cheerful situation: forty miles from 
the nearest habitation, which was at Ten Sleep ; 
nearly two miles up in the air, and, to cap the 
climax, a very slender supply in our commissary 
box. Although it was practically midsummer, only 
barely past the middle of August, the evening and 
night was bitterly cold and the blazing logs of the 
campfire felt very grateful. Realizing that we 
would be out of food in another twenty-four hours, 
I was mighty glad that we had two cars with us. 
Next morning the small car was dispatched to Ten 
Sleep to have the broken axle welded, if perchance 
there was a blacksmith in the little town; if not, 
it would have to proceed to Worland, another forty 
miles beyond and rough going all the way. In 
either case it would be gone at least two days, so 
that the prospects of reduced rations for the remain- 
ing party loomed bright ineed. 

Strolling around the neighborhood of the camp 
during the day, it seemed to me on a couple of 
occasions that I heard the distant bleating of sheep, 
but again, on listening intently for a repetition of 
the sound, I was unable to verify my impression. 
The next morning, after a slim breakfast, we had 
an empty foodbox — and our appetites were mighty 
keen up there in the wonderfully pure air. Again 
I thought I heard sheep bleating, and determined 
to set out on a trip of exploration. After going a 
couple of miles I knew that I had chanced upon 



104 



IN THE BIGHORNS 




A couple of days ^vne spent at this palaiial residrmr, 

the home of a sheepman on top of the Bighorn mountains 

in Wyoming, ivhile repairing damages to our car 



the right direction, and that my impression about 
the sheep was right, for now I very distinctly heard 
the sheep and also the barking of a dog. 

Hastening in the direction of the sound, I found 
a flock of some two thousand sheep, with a herder 
in attendance. He was a white man and very glad 
to see one from the outside. After an explanation 
of our predicament, he directed me to his wagon, 
his lonely home on wheels, and told me to help 
myself from his ample commissary, containing flour, 
bacon, condensed milk, canned fruit and other 
necessaries. He also lent me his horse to carry the 
stuff to our camp, but could not leave his flock for 
fear of it being attacked by wolves. This generous 
hospitality put us beyond danger of privation. On 
returning with the horse later in the day, the herder 
refused absolutely to accept any recompense for the 



IN THE BIGHORNS 



105 



food and would only take some magazines which I 
had hrought him. 

That night the other car returned from Ten 
Sleep, where the axle had been welded by a black- 
smith, who fortunately was located there, and also 
bringing a supply of food. Next morning we set 
out retracing our way towards the fork where we 
had made our mistake three days before. Before 
reaching that far, however, the axle once more 
broke in the same place, and again the little car 
had to make the rough journey to Ten Sleep m 
another effort to have the damage repaired. That 
night a heavy snow fell on the mountains, and it 
was bitterly cold. While wood was plentiful it was 
wet from the snow, and thus it was difficult to keep 
the campfire ablaze, causing us keen suffering, as 
we had hardly sufficient clothing to keep warm 
under such conditions after dividing it with two of 
our party who were quite thinly clad. 

Another two days and our little savior car ap- 
peared, and once more we were able to move. 1 his 
time we made within twenty miles of Ten Sleep 
when for the third time the axle snapped, again in 
the same place. 

The little car's journey to the blacksmith shop 
and return this time was made within twenty-four 
hours, and eventually we reached the little town 
and, to our great delight, found as clean and well 
kept a little hotel as it had ever been our pleasure 
to encounter. For many a long day the comforts 
of this place, with its good home-cooked food, re- 
mained in our grateful memory, after the trials and 
tribulations on top of the Bighorns. 



Photographing the Red Man 

IT IS said that all Indians are averse to being 
photographed. My pathfinding has at one 
time or another brought me in contact with 
most of our Indian tribes, and as I am a consistent 
camera fiend my experiences have shown that upon 
the whole this assertion is fairly correct. How- 
ever, with few exceptions I have found that the 
Indian is generally a shrewd enough business man 
to appear hostile towards the camera until he is 
properly mollified by a dose of palmoil. The more 
copious this dose the more amenable towards the 
ordeal he becomes and the less fear of ''the evil 
eye" he exhibits, even to the extent of overcoming 
religious scruples. 

On the Flathead reservation, in Montana, I was 
told that it would be absolutely impossible to get 
Chief Louis Pierre to pose for a snapshot, but, being 
properly introduced and having applied the uni- 
versal persuader in a diplomatic and generous 
manner, he consented to "have his picture took." 
However, first he sent one of his bucks for his 
favorite cayuse, as he deemed it below his dignity 
to be photographed afoot, like the humbler members 
of his household. Mounted on his horse, he issued 
commands to his followers and ordered them to 
procure their rifles and guns from the tepees. He 
then arranged them to suit his idea of martial posi- 
tion and, taking a stand at the head of the line, 
grandiloquently signalled to "let her go." 

At another place on the same reservation I no- 
ticed a tepee picturesquely located near the shore of 

106 



PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 107 




Chief Louis Pierre, of the Flathead Indians in Montana, 
insisted on mounting his cayuse and marshalling the male 
members of his family, heavily armed, into proper forma- 
tion before consenting to being photographed 



Flathead Lake and surrounded by small white birch 
trees. It made such an unusually pleasing picture 
to the eye that I jumped out of the car and ap- 
proached, in the meantime adjusting the focus as 
well as the aperture and speed of the shutter to 
suit the light. As I snapped the shutter some one 
on the inside of the tepee heard the click and an 
Indian came out with a bound, leveling a Win- 
chester rifle at me. He looked fiercely at me and 
insisted that I take out the film and destroy it in 
his presence. But again the silver-tongued clink 
of coin made it all right. 

Once, among the Mohave Indians near Needles, 
California, I attempted in vain to persuade several 
picturesquely squalid individuals to consent to being 
photographed. By various ruses I had managed to 
steal a few snapshots, when I encountered an ex- 



108 PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 

ceptfonally good subject in the way of an old crone, 
sitting before her reed hut, making pearl watchfobs. 
I used my most persuasive arguments and bought 
more than enough watchfobs to last me for the rest 
of my life; but it was no use, she persistently and 
most emphatically refused to be photographed. As 
I had my camera open, with proper adjustments 
except as to focus, I surreptitiously set this at 
twenty feet and turned on my heel, ostensibly to 
leave the neighborhood. When I was about twenty 
feet away from the hut I suddenly whirled around 
and snapped the button. 

The old squaw showed surprising agility in get- 
ting to an erect position. She picked up a couple 
of stones and hurled one of them with great force 
directly at me, exhibiting the greatest fury as she 
came running towards me. Fortunately I dodged 
the first missile, turned on my heel and beat an 
ignominious retreat at top speed. My driver had 
the car nearby with the motor running, and as I 
jumped in the second stone came whistling through 
the air and struck the fender of the car, making 
quite a dent in it. As I turned around to watch 
the enemy, she was picking up another stone and 
came running after us, but of course in a few sec- 
onds we were beyond range. 

The Yuma Indians are even more hostile to the 
camera than their cousins, the Mohaves. Tourists 
who stop over from transcontinental trains for a 
visit in the town of Yuma find that these Indians, 
men as well as women, are most expert at shielding 
their faces when encountered on the sidewalks of 
the town. They always have an eagle eye cocked 
for cameras and are prone to make trouble when 



PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 109 

they think that some one has succeeded in taking 
a snapshot of them. 

Realizing the situation, I took a drive out on 
their reservation and visited some of their farms, 
but was in every instance unsuccessful in persuading 
any of the tribe by any means whatsoever to con- 
sent to be photographed. Even their chief, Pas- 
quale, who seemed most intelligent, would not have 
his picture taken on any condition. I had about 
given up the hope of success when I encountered 
two squaws at a place where the road was com- 
pletely hidden from the surrounding country by tall 
reeds. They were returning to their houses on the 
reservation from a visit to the town. Stopping the 
car, I pulled out a handful of silver coin and, after 
much talk and the promise of a dollar apiece, they 
consented to let me take a photograph of them, pro- 
vided I was sure that no one was in sight to see 
the performance and upon my solemn promise that 
I w^ould not show the pictures to any one in Yuma. 
I decided to use the plate camera in place of the 
kodak, in order to secure a large photo of them and 
also to insure perfect focus. There is where I made 
my mistake. While the tripod was being erected 
and the formidable camera with its black focusing 
cloth gotten in readiness, the inherent fear of the 
thing evidently began to take possession of them 
and make them exceedingly nervous. I noticed 
their trepidation and hastened to get everything in 
shape, not even taking the time to procure a careful 
and sharp focus. As I squeezed the bulb and they 
heard the click of the shutter, they turned and ran 
into the reeds as fast as they could, without waiting 
for their dollars. This disregard of the money con- 



110 PHOTOGRAPHING THE RED MAN 

vinced me that their fear was genuine and that I 
might count myself lucky to have secured this pic- 
ture, even though the focus proved to be a little off. 

Among the pueblos of New Mexico there is 
little trouble to get Indians to pose for the camera, 
as they have long since learned that the operation is 
as painless as it is profitable and that no evil results 
follow. But some of these tribes have been badly 
spoiled and have acquired quite an inflated idea of 
their value as artistic subjects. Thus at Acoma I 
was not allowed by the governor of the pueblo to 
unpack my photographic outfit without first paying 
a fee of five dollars into the local government 
treasury. 

At Zuni I found little difficulty in getting the 
governor of that pueblo to act as my official guide 
and introducer to any member of the tribe whom 
I might want to photograph, of course for a con- 
sideration, both to the guide and to the subjects. 
But when I tried to get permission to picture the 
Shalako Dances, one of their most picturesque re- 
ligious ceremonies, I met a most positive refusal and 
had to give up the effort to do so. 

While the Navahos and Hopis do not like to be 
subjects for the camera and their women will hide 
their faces so as not even to be able to see the evil 
contrivance which takes the pictures, it is usually 
not very difficult to overcome this aversion if diplo- 
matically handled. However, at religious cere- 
monies it is exceedingly difficult to secure the assent 
of the heads of the clans to the taking of photo- 
graphs. But it has been done. The Apaches, 
Papagos and Pimas are entirely indifferent to the 
camera and do not mind it in the least. 



Americans All 

IN TRAVELING through the country districts 
in many of our Western, Central Western and 
even Southern States, one will frequently strike 
a county inhabited almost exclusively by emigrants 
from one particular European nation. It impresses 
one most forcibly that though these people often 
cling to their native language and in their homes 
retain in large measure their former method of liv- 
ing, cooking their food and even to some extent of 
fashioning their clothes, they strongly maintain that 
above all they are Americans and with great indig- 
nation resent any assertions which tend to impugn 
their whole-hearted loyalty to the Stars and Stripes. 
Of course, we have with us anachronisms like the 
Louisiana French and the New Mexican Mexicans, 
a large percentage of whom, in spite of living under 
our flag for generations, do not speak or even under- 
stand the English language. Then there are the 
numerous Indian tribes, the original Americans, of 
whom only a certain percentage understand our 
language or care to learn it. However, the foreign 
immigrants as a rule do learn our tongue in course 
of time and at least are ambitious that their children 
shall attend schools and become Americans, in all 
respects like the majority of their fellow citizens. 

But there are localities in some of the more re- 
mote regions where these people sometimes become 
to some extent isolated, and this condition tends to 
handicap the fulfillment of their desire for inter- 
mingling with English-speaking people and to main- 
tain, with small opportunities for a change, their 

111 



112 



AMERICANS ALL 




Passing the Pueblo of Lagiina, Neiv Mexico. This littlt- 
Indian republic, ivith its old church and storied apart- 
ment houses, is directly by the path of one of the main 
transcontinental motor routes 



old-country language and ways. Again, there are 
a few instances where certain nationals, especially 
if they have arrived on our shores when past middle 
age, find the acquisition of our language so difficult 
that, in view of the fact that they live among their 
old-country folks and hence are not compelled to 
learn any other tongue, they naturally do not make 
a very serious effort to do so. 

Not long ago, I travelled through Illinois on an 
inspection tour over the Lincoln Highway and had 
reached a point only a few miles directly south of 
Chicago, when we were overtaken by a storm which 
soon made the dirt road so slippery and the going 
so heavy that we decided to pitch camp in the first 
likely spot available. This proved to be a country 
schoolhouse yard with nice clean grass, wood in 
the shed and good water at the pump. Directly 



AMERICANS ALL 



113 



across the road was a neat cottage occupied by the 
pastor of a nearby German church. 

After snugging up the camp I went across to 
interview our neighbors, having in mind the acqui- 
sition of some fresh eggs and milk. A fine-looking 
man with about seventy years behind him sat on the 
enclosed porch, and to him I addressed my intro- 
ductory remarks, but in reply received only a pleas- 
ant smile and a sign to step indoors. Here I met 
a young woman, who explained to me that her 
father did not understand English, but that she 
would be very glad to supply our wants. After 
a few minutes' conversation with her 1 learned, to 
my astonishment, tliat her father had served the 
nearby church as its pastor forty-five years. As tlie 
necessity for learning Englisli liad never been pres- 
ent, he had never seriously tackled the task whicli 




The black gumbo soil of Central Illinois, so fertile for 

the raising of crops, nvhen ivet makes poor material 

for roads. Failure to put on Weed chains in time soon 

stops progress 



114 AMERICANS ALL 

he had found so full of difficulties when he first 
arrived. 

At another time in Western Illinois we again had 
trouble with muddy roads and our engine over- 
heated, necessitating a stop for water at a farm 
house. The dwelling house and barns were neatly 
painted and the premises as well kept as a suburban 
estate. Our driver, who was of Polish descent and 
quite well acquainted with several Central Euro- 
pean languages and dialects, went in and asked an 
old man on the porch if he could have some water 
from the well. The answer was a vacant stare 
which eloquently indicated that the request was not 
understood, so the driver made the same inquiry 
in Russian, Polish, German and three or four dia- 
lects without better success. 

Noticing that he started for the w^ell to get the 
water without the formality of a permission, I called 
him back and tackled the job of reaching the old 
gentleman's intelligence myself. Though he evi- 
dently was not of the Latin race, I asked him in 
French and Spanish without eliciting even a glance 
of understanding, when all at once it occurred to 
me to try him in one of the Scandinavian tongues, 
which really should have been the most obvious to 
try first, in view of the old man's cast of features. 
As I was born in Norway, I tried him with Nor- 
w^egian first and struck the right note with the first 
touch. A sunny smile lighted up his face as a 
perfect stream of a Norwegian dialect, used in one 
of the most remote valleys of the mountainous 
Land of the Midnight Sun, issued from his lips. 
He told me he had been at his wits' end trying to 
make out what we were all talking about. The 



AMERICANS ALL 115 

wonder of it was that he had lived right on that 
farm for forty-two years. As the county was settled 
almost exclusively by his countrymen, he had never 
learned English, though he had been a citizen for 
a generation and voted regularly at every election. 

In Northeastern Colorado I camped one night 
near a farm in a community of Russians, a very 
small number of whom could speak English. They 
were good farmers and cast their votes at all elec- 
tions. In Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas 
are many counties where English is rarely heard 
except where the younger folks congregate without 
the elders being present. 

Covering the Old Spanish Trail along the Gulf 
Coast in Louisiana, I once had to make a detour 
across some marsh lands on account of road con- 
struction, and before proceeding very far promptly 
mired too deep to move either forwards or back- 




The roads tlirouyh the cypress s^iuimps on the Gulf coast 

in Luuisiana are often so sticky and "slithery" that it is 

almost impossible to keep from sliding into the ditch 



116 AMERICAXS ALL 

wards. Noticing a plantation not far away, I pro- 
ceeded over to the main building and requested 
from a man in the yard his assistance and the use 
of a pair of horses, but had to use French before my 
request was understood. While he understood my 
bookish French, it was exceedingly difficult for me 
to understand his patois, or Louisiana French. His 
people had lived there for generations but had been 
too proud to try to learn English, and besides it 
was not at all necessary to take the trouble to do so. 
as these people do not travel far from home and the 
neighbors all understand each other. Out' voiilez 
I'ouzf 

In New Mexico, we arrived one evening at Rito 
Quemado, in the remote western part of Socorro 
County, a hundred miles from a railroad. This 
little Mexican settlement is on the National Old 
Trails route and 1 had on another occasion put up 
overnight at the house of Anastacio Baca, the store- 
keeper. None of the Baca family understood a 
word of English, though New Mexico has been 
under the Stars and Stripes since 184S. We were 
made welcome with the open-hearted, proverbial 
hospitality of the Mexican race. ^Vhile eating our 
meal, it was most amusing to watch my wife and 
senora Baca carry on a conversation without either 
one understanding a word of the other's language. 
In spite of this, through some feminine intuition 
or freemasonry of the sex. they seemed to be able 
to make each other understand without further diffi- 
culties than more or less acrobatic gestures, rolling 
of the eyes and waving of the arms. At least, so 
tlie performance looked to me. who was all the time 



AMERICANS ALL 1 17 

wondering how a mere ignorant male would have 
succeeded under similar circumstances. 

Another thing is soon noticed hy any observant 
traveler into country districts, and that is that he 
finds no settlements of Hebrews, Italians, Greeks, 
Turks or Spaniards. These races seem to prefer 
congregating in cities, and devote themselves to 
trades and commerce rather than agriculture. The 
races that make our real farmers — the backbone of 
our western agricultural regions, the producers of 
the fruit of the soil — come from Central and 
Northern European countries. And, best of all, 
these races amalgamate and fit themselves most 
readily into things American. They generally come 
with intention to stay and do stay for good, become 
citizens and are proud of the privilege. 

As 1 am writing this the 77th Division, having 
just returned from France, where it made a most 
glorious record for itself in the World War, is 
parading up Fifth Avenue, past my office windows. 
The division is made up of New York City boys 
drawn from almost every race on earth. Jews from 
many lands, Italians, Armenians, Poles, Greeks, 
Czecho-Slovaks, Jugoslavs, Rumanians, Hungarians, 
Germans, Scandinavians and many other original 
ingredients of the melting pot, march by, proud of 
having served the flag — now Americans all and the 
sinews of the nation. 



Some ^^ Hotels ! " 

NATURALLY, I have had a rather unusual 
opportunity in my ramifying motor trips to 
sample hotels. I have found that there are 
more varieties of "hotels" in our country than are 
embodied in the various names of hotel, hostelry, 
inn, tavern, cafe, wirthaus, rathskeller, bodega, 
kaiserhof, pensionat, and all other European varie- 
ties of establishments that cater to looking after a 
wayfarer, all put together. The term hotel is ap- 
plied indiscriminately to such establishments as the 
Commodore in New York and the Blackstone in 
Chicago, or the Ambassador at Atlantic City, whose 
vast piles look more like huge office buildings than 
anything else, all the way dow^n through the chro- 
matic scale to such structure as the shack at Cisco, 
Utah, which proudly exhibits the sign "hotel" over 
its door, the sole entrance into a hut built of dis- 
carded railroad ties stood on end. 

Also, the disposition of some of the lordly beings 
who superintend the management of some of the 
gilded palaces are as different from that of the 
humble bonifaces who in their shirt sleeves come 
out and with glad hand of hospitality help to carry 
in your baggage as human nature is given to differ. 
On my first trip across the United States in a 
motor car, w^e put up at one of the more pretentious 
hotels in one of the largest Middle West cities, a 
big, multi-storied building with pretensions to have 
everything of the very latest in comforts and clock- 
like management, including a special clerk for each 
floor. That night a thief entered our suite, chloro- 
us 



SOME "hotels" 119 

formed my wife and me, and carried away all our 
traveling money, amounting to several hundred 
dollars, but carefully and studiously refrained from 
touching any of the jewelry which was openly dis- 
played on the dresser. 

When we came out of our narcotic coma and 
realized what had happened and a search divulged 
the theft, I of course made a complaint to the man- 
ager. He merely calmly asserted that such a thing 
could not happen in his well-regulated establishment 
and seemed to think that that assertion should 
suffice, and that I really was quite presumptuous 
in insisting that it nevertheless had happened. The 
situation was something like the Irishman in jail 
who insisted he really was there, though his lawyer 
maintained that he could not be jailed for the 
alleged offense. 

This hotel typified the high note at one end of 
the chromatic scale, while the shack at Cisco typi- 
fied the other extreme or bass note. Within a 
dozen miles of the little town of Cisco, of a half 
dozen houses near the Utah-Colorado line, we had 
the misfortune to break several teeth in the master 
gear of the differential on our car, and were com- 
pelled to stop and stay where we were while our 
companion car ran into Cisco for a team of horses. 
In the course of nearly two days these arrived and 
hauled us in. When we reached Cisco, tired and 
worn after our trying experience in this desolate 
country, we were dismayed to find that the "hotel" 
was a low structure built of discarded railroad ties 
stood side by side on end, and naturally so low that 
we had to stoop upon entering. 

Asking the woman, whom I found in the kitchen, 



20 



SOME HOTELS 




The pathfinder often encountered I'ery primitive accom- 
modations ivhich, hoivever, generally ii-ere offset by the 
glad hand of ivelcome and hearty hospitality 



it she had a room for iis, she said: "Sure; help 
>oiirself." Inciuirin*: where the room was. she 
pointed to a pile of bhinkets, heaped in a corner of 
tlie only other room outside of the culinary depart- 
ment, and told us to take one, spread it out wher- 
e\er our fancy dictated, and ri^ht there was our 
room and also our bed. for which she made the 
modest ciiarge of fifty cents, payable in advance. 
AVhile this was somewhat discoura<::ing. we were 
pleasantly surprised to sit down to a really good 
home-cooked meal, \\hich with beds prepared by 
means of our car's cushions made us feel that lots 
of folks fared worse than we did that night. 

In the hot country of the IMohave. Colorado and 
Gila river deserts there are other hotels besides the 
well-managed railroad hotels, such as those of the 
Harvey system, usually named after one of the 
Spanish conquistadores or padres. At the smaller 



SOMI- "JIOTI'LS" 121 

desert railroad stations — there l")ein<i; no other set- 
tlements in the desert — frequently the "hotel" is 
what is called a tent-house. This kind of a house 
is wooden as to the floor and the first four feet from 
the ground up, while the balance, side and roof, is 
canvas, and there are no windows except screened 
openings. I'hey make cool sleeping quarters and 
are often comfortably furnished. 

In the non-English-speaking Mexican towns of 
New Mexico the "hotel" or posada is usually a low 
adobe structure, cool, clean and comfortable though 
primitively furnished. It is said that these adobe 
houses are the easiest kind to build. As Chas. F. 
Lummis, the writer, puts it: "One merely flays one's 
lawn, stands the epidermis on end and roofs it." 
However the usual Mexican diet, generally strong 
with red pepper, is beyond the average American 
stomach. 

Having had experience with unwelcome little 
brown bedfellows in several hotels in small towns 
of the Middle West prairie states, I have made it 
a practice to carefully examine the bedding for sign 
of vermin, even carrying a small electric pocket 
torch for the purpose, and on several occasions have 
endured the indignant protest of the landlord or 
landlady. But, as I told one especially irate host in 
one of the smaller Western Nebraska towns, I 
never could get used to these unbidden guests and 
didn't propose to furnish them with free board, 
hence I should have to insist upon the search. Yes, 
indeed, there are hotels — and hotels. 



Lost— But Recovered 

Ar ONE time when I covered the route later 
given the long and awkward name of 
^ Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean National 
Highway we traveled through a rough and, for 
long stretches, uninhabited country in Colorado 
and Utah. We had the misfortune to break a rear 
axle in the big game country of Northwestern 
Colorado while attempting to pull out of a deep 
and sandy arroyo some twenty miles from the near- 
est habitation. The driver set out to walk the 
twenty miles for help. While he was gone the rest 
of our party were soon out of provisions, but fortu- 
nately I discovered smoke some two miles oft, and 
upon investigating, found the camp of a couple of 
Mexican hunters for wild horses. These provided 
us with food, so we eventually got away all right. 
It was interesting to note the superb horsemanship 
and fleet bunch of horses of these hunters. Indeed, 
they needed fleet mounts to chase, tire out, and 
finall\' lasso or coral the best specimens in the herds 
of wild horses, as these were also very speedy, but 
had not the same stamia for endurance as the 
gentle stock. 

At a ranch near the state line we had the expe- 
rience for the first, only and last time in the entire 
West of being refused something to eat. Not but 
what there was plenty of provisions at the ranch, 
but excuses were made that it really was too much 
bother to get it for us. However, we were eventu- 
ally able to coax a pitcher of milk and a few slices 
122 



LOST BUT RliCOVKRKD 123 

of bread from the inhospitable queen who evidently 
lorded it over the household. 

On this trip at a little town in Utah, we found 
quarters for the night in a rather unprepossessing 
little "hotel" in a small town. After leaving the 
place next morning my wife discovered that she had 
left her rosary, as she supposed, under her pillow, 
and forgot to remove it on arising in the morning. 
Some days later, upon again reaching a city, I wrote 
back to the hotel explaining the result of my wife's 
forgetfulness and asked that the beads be mailed to 
my New York office, as my wife prized them highly 
on account of certain associations connected with 
them. 

When, in course of time, we returned to New 
York and found no trace of the rosary nor any 
communication from the hotel people of the little 
Utah town, it was naturally given up as lost and 
the incident soon forgotten. However, three years 
later, a package and letter came from the little town. 
The package contained the rosary and the letter 
explained that it has just been found under the 
mattress of the bed my wife occupied when we 
stopped there. 

Some uncharitably-minded person might make 
facetious remarks about the length of time between 
the airings of the beds in this hostelry or utter 
words to that effect. Three years does seem a 
mighty extended time for the discovery of the lost 
article as long as it admittedly was found in the 
very bed where it was said to be lost but, however, 
my wife was glad to recover her precious beads and 
I shall naturally refrain from speculations. 



The Uu'Named Pass 

IT WAS at the time of laying out the ^lidland 
Trail, now the Roosevelt National Highway, 
that 1 first crossed Nevada in a southwesterly 
direction. Between Ely and Tonopah, a distance 
of nearly two hundred miles, there were only four 
habitations and the country exceedingly barren, of 
a desert and volcanic nature. We crossed desert 
\alleys and low mountain ranges all the way, but 
found the going surprisingly good, the soil being 
for the most part a disintegrated granite, almost 
like a fine gravel, and this made the ground firm 
and practically immune to the washing which the 
occasional cloud bursts generally cause in adobe soil. 

Beyond Tonopah, a productive silver mining 
camp, and Goldfield, the location of one of the 
really big producing gold mines of the country, the 
territory becomes rougher. On the entire distance 
from Goldfield, Nevada, to Big Pine. California, 
a matter of a hundred and nineteen miles, there are 
only three inhabited places, Lida, a small mining 
camp in Nevada, Oasis, a ranch just across the 
California line, and Gilbert's Ranch. Shortly be- 
yond the latter we began to ascend the White 
Mountains range through a picturesque, black- 
walled canyon, and at the summit found a U. S. 
geological bench mark showing an altitude of seven 
thousand two hundred and seventy-six feet. 

The descent from the mountain, on an easy 
gradient througli a winding canyon, presented one 
of the most beautiful views 1 have seen in Cali- 
fornia, and the pass formed one of the most impres- 

124 



THE UN-NAMED PASS 



125 




-^ 



// ci^'ouLi he difficult to find an equal continuous mdeagr 

nj qood natural gra-vel road as that reaching across the 

State of Nevada from Ely to Tonopah 

sive entrances into the Golden State. The vista, 
as one descended the slope of the mountain, reached 
across the Owen River valley and straight ahead 
was shut off by the towering wall of the Sierra 
Nevadas, with Mount Whitney overtopping all the 
surrounding high peaks. Mount Whitney is 14,500 
feet high and the highest peak within the bound- 
aries of the United States. For a hundred miles 
up and down the valley one could see this rock 
wall, rising steeply from the valley floor practically 
without foothills. The top of the sky-piercing 
peaks were snow-clad, while the valley was green 
with growing crops, cottonwoods and willows. 
Above it all the wondrous colors of a glorious sun- 
set touched the shoulders of the peaks with gold, 
silver and scarlet, contrasting strongly with the 
somber shadows of the cliasms and canyons which 
rent the mountain side. 



THE UN-NAMED PASS 127 

The picture was wonderfully impressive and long 
lingered in our memories. Near the foot of the pass 
we were met by a delegation from the town of 
Bishop, in Owen River valley, who came to bid 
us welcome to California as pioneers over this route 
and to tender us the hospitality of their town. This 
delegation was led by Wisner Gillett Scott, than 
whom no man in California deserves more honor 
for untiring, intelligent and withal patient work 
for the development of good roads in the State, a 
man who has persistently pointed out the practical 
as well as esthetic value of California's wonderful 
attractions within the Sierra Nevada range if prop- 
erly exploited and put within reasonably comfort- 
able reach of visitors. 

I asked this delegation the name of the pass 
which we had just come through, and to my sur- 
prise learned that it had no name either locally or 
on the State maps. 

About a year later I accompanied a caravan of 
some twenty cars from the East over this route, 
and we were again met by the Bishop delegation, 
this time at Oasis Ranch. When we reached the 
summit of the pass which had impressed me so much 
the year before, a stop was made before a neat 
tablet erected at this spot since my last trip. The 
legend on the tablet read : "Westgard Pass. Named 
for A. L. Westgard in recognition of distinguished 
service rendered Trans-Sierra California." A copy 
of resolutions passed by the Inyo county commis- 
sioners, giving the pass my name, was handed me 
by the delegation. 1 must say that I feel most 
deeply the honor shown me by California in nam- 
ing this beautiful pass after me. 



Our NcitiofJiil Piirks 

UNFORTUNATELY, nearly all our na- 
tional parks are located in the West, in the 
Rocky Mountain, the Sierra Nevada and 
Cascade ranges, and thus not easily accessible except 
at considerable expense to the vastly greater per- 
centage of our population. This, of course, could 
not be otherwise, on account of the topography of 
the country, and for this reason it is incumbent on 
all those citizens who have had the good fortune to 
enable them to spend the time and money to travel 
through and enjoy these magnificent wild regions 
to spread broadcast the glories of the mountains, 
forests, glaciers, peaks, canyons, lakes, streams, ani- 
mal life and many natural wonders of these parks, 
in order to incite in their fellow citizens a healthy 
desire to go and do likewise. 

There are eighteen national parks, of which 
ten are especially notewortln . and all of which 
should be seen by every American, worthy of the 
name, before he starts globe-trotting. Most of the 
famous scenic wonders of other lands would not 
seem to him so impressi\ e if he were in position to 
draw comparisons between tliem and those in the 
national parks of his own land. There are no gla- 
ciers in the Alps surpassing those of Glacier Na- 
tional Park in Montana, there are no geysers in 
the world e\ en approaching in interest those of 
Yellowstone National Park. ^Vhere on earth is 
there any chasm e\ en faintly approaching in 
grandeur the indescribable colorful \astness of the 
Grand Canyon of Arizona? Mount Rainier Na- 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



29 




CoJy, U'yom'uiy, boasts of one of the most unique monu- 
ments in America. It is built entirely of Elk horns, and 
is located on the main street of the toivn 

tional Park in Washington is in a class by itself, 
and Crater National Park in Oregon is a blue gem 
like the finest jewel, incomparable to any other 
scenic spot on earth. And where on the face of 
this mundane sphere is there a spot with charms 
equal to those of the Yosemite National Park in 
California? The oldest living things in the world 
are the giant redwood trees in the Sequoia, now the 
Roosevelt National Park, in the Sierra Nevadas of 
California. The prehistoric ruins of the Mesa 
Verde National Park in Colorado were probably 
ancient when the Pharaohs built the Pyramids, and 
the towering peaks, moraines and glaciers of the 
Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado are 
only a few miles from one of the large cities of the 
West and easily accessible to millions of our people 
without undue consumption of time or expenditure 



130 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 

of money, while the rainbow colors on clilis and 
crags in the newly created Zion National Park in 
Utah defy an artist's brush. 

All of these parks — which of course are not parks 
in the sense of city parks, but vast rugged regions, 
often thousands of square miles in extent and teem- 
ing with perpetually protected game — are left in the 
primeval condition of nature and are accessible by 
motor car. The United States Government, with 
some niggardliness it is true, has constructed roads 
and trails through them and provided frequent 
camping places, with concrete cooking stoves adja- 
cent to fuel and good water, besides granting con- 
cessions for hotels, stage lines and other conveniences 
which are administered under the close supervision 
of government employees. The National Park Ser- 
vice, a branch of the Interior Department, has 
shown most conspicuous efficiency in the face of 
decidedly penurious appropriations from Congress, 
which, it seems to me, has not yet, as a body, shown 
sufficient appreciation of the importance of these 
public vacation grounds with their potential recre- 
ative and economic benefits to the nation. 

A motor-route map of the United States issued 
by the American Automobile Association shows the 
location of all the national parks and the best routes 
leading to them. 1 have personally compiled this 
map from actual observation in covering the main 
trunk-line routes to the parks, and herewith append 
a brief outline of the proper routes to use to reach 
the most important of them : 

Rocky Mountain National Park, near Denver, 
Colorado, is reached from the Lincoln Highway or 
from the Midland Trail; also from the National 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



131 




Our camp in the Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo- 
rado, at an altitude of about 9500 feet. Nothing on earth 
can compare ivith the evening hour before the blazing 
camp fire ivith the pipe draiving ivell and everybody 
toned right for a story 

Old Trails Road and Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean 
Highway. 

Yellowstone National Park is reached by follow- 
ing the Yellowstone Highway from the Lincoln 
Highway at Cheyenne, Wyoming; by the National 
Parks Highway or the Yellowstone Trail from 
Minneapolis, or via the Black and Yellow Trail; 
also by route deviating from the Lincoln Highway 
at Salt Lake City or from Rawlins, Wyoming. 

Glacier National Park is reached by the Park- 
to-Park Highway, deviating from the National 
Parks Highway and the Yellowstone Trail either 
at Livingston, Three Forks or at Missoula, Mon- 
tana. 

Rainier National Park is reached only from Ta- 
coma, Washington, on the Pacific Highway. 



132 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 

Crater National Park is reached from Medford, 
Oregon, on the Pacific, Highway, or from Lake- 
view, Oregon, on the National Defense Highway. 

Yosemite National Park is reached from Stock- 
ton, California, on the Lincoln and Pacific High- 
ways, and via Tioga Pass from the Roosevelt Na- 
tional Highway (Midland Trail). 

Roosevelt National Park, formerly Sequoia, is 
reached from Fresno, California, on the National 
Old Trails Road and will eventually be accessible 
from Bishop via the Roosevelt National Highway. 

Grand Canyon National Park is reached from 
Flagstaff or Williams, Arizona, on the National 
Old Trails Road. 

Mesa Verde National Park is reached from Colo- 
rado Springs or Pueblo, Colorado, via the Spanish 
Trail, or from Gallup, New Mexico, on the Na- 
tional Old Trails Route. 

Zion National Park is reached from the Arrow- 
head Trail, which connects the Lincoln, Pike's Peak 
Ocean to Ocean and Roosevelt National Highways 
at Salt Lake City, Utah, with the National Old 
Trail Road, near Needles, California. 

The National Parks Service at Washington, 
D. C, issues maps and regulations of all these parks 
and anyone may have them for the asking. 



The Forage Stations 

DURING the rush of the "forty-niners" to 
the California gold fields the route through 
southern New Mexico and the Gila Valley 
of Arizona was thronged by caravans from the East 
eager to reach the fabled El Dorado in the shortest 
possible time. These individual outfits were sup- 
plemented by stage lines in 1857 running all the 
way from San Antonio, Texas, to San Diego and 
Los Angeles, even to San Francisco, California. 
These were prosperous days for the murderous 
Apache Indian bands, which made travel extremely 
hazardous through southern Arizona. These piti- 
less shadows of the trail would lurk behind rocks 
or lie in wait in canyons and swoop down upon 
emigrant trains and stages, slaying men, women 
and children and robbing the trains of anything of 
value. 

The Civil War put a stop to travel along this 
route and the Apaches then began to raid the scat- 
tered settlements of whites. Finally, in 1872, the 
War Department sent General Crook to Arizona, 
and this doughty soldier and leader soon put a stop 
to the outrages. However, every now and then 
the savages would break bounds and start out on 
murderous raids, and it was not until 1886 when 
the last fighting unit of the Apaches under the cruel 
and vicious Geronimo finally surrendered to Gen- 
eral Miles, after a most persistent and strenuous 
chase of thirteen months in the mountains of 
Sonora, Mexico, that troubles with the tribe were 
quelled for good. Fort Apache, an army cavalry 

133 



134 THE FORAGE STATIONS 

post, was established during this period on the 
White Mountains Apache Indian reservation, the 
garrison acting as a police force and salutary check 
on any tendencies to further outbreaks. 

This army post is located sixty-one miles from 
Rice, a station on a branch of the Southern Pacific 
Railroad, to the south, and about one hundred and 
ten miles from Holbrook, on the Santa Fe Railroad, 
to the north. As the post is located in a mountain- 
ous region on the White River, practically no agri- 
culture is carried on in the section, and all supplies, 
even horse feed, had to be hauled from the two 
railroad points above mentioned. A considerable 
portion of this traffic used the rough trail through 
a very rugged and broken country to Rice, and in 
order to provide the freighters with quarters for 
themselves and feed for their mules two forage sta- 
tions were established on the route, and the running 
of these stations was let out by contract to civilians, 
who undertook to have the stations stocked with 
food for man and beast. 

One of these stations was located near the Black 
River crossing, twenty-one miles from the post, and 
the other seventeen miles further away in the 
Natanes range of mountains. At the time of pio- 
neering in a motor car over the Trail to Sunset, 
now the Apache Trail, we arrived, after successfully 
risking the ford across the swift, boulder-strewn 
Black River, at the tirst forage station just as dark- 
ness fell. The keeper of the station and his wife 
could hardly believe that an automobile had actually 
arrived at their front door. In fact, the lady had 
never seen an automobile, as no motor car had ever 
before chugged its way into this mountain fastness. 



THE FORAGE STATIONS 135 

We were hospitably welcomed to the very primitive 
accommodations avaihible. While the good lady 
was preparing our supper the station keeper showed 
us a rifle which he had only that day procured from 
an old Indian who the week previous had killed his 
wife with it and been apprehended by the soldiers 
that day near the station. 

This story, supplemented by others telling of 
renegade Indians, bears and mountain lions, made 
my companions somewhat nervous, as this was an 
out-of-the-way place where few travelers came. 
However, our hostess assured them that there was 
no cause for anxiety, because the dogs, of which 
there were several about the place, would be sure 
to bark if anything unusual happened or if anybody 
approached. Being tired after a strenuous day's 
work, I fell into a sound sleep as soon as my head 
struck the pillow, and awoke next morning much 
refreshed after a fine night's rest. Not so my com- 
panions. They were wan, with heavy-lidded eyes, 
for want of sleep. The dogs had barked continu- 
ously all night and the poor fellows had been kept 
on edge for hours waiting for the expected "un- 
usual" to happen, as per the statement of the station 
keeper's wife. 

The next year, when I again covered this route, 
I was told of a wanton murder of two business 
men from Globe who had taken possession of the 
abandoned forage station in the Xatanes range while 
hunting and rishing in that section. During their 
stay two discharged soldiers from Fort Apache also 
made their quarters there. During one of their 
meals the soldiers murdered their companions for 
their pocket change and arms and started across 



136 THE FORAGE STATIONS 

country for the railroad. Ordinarily their crime 
might not have been discovered for weeks, but it 
so happened that another couple of hunters were 
camped for the night not far away and heard the 
shots. Upon investigating next morning they found 
the bodies of the murdered men and hastened to 
Globe to report the crime. A posse set out and the 
criminals were eventually caught, and were in the 
jail at Globe awaiting trial when this story was 
told us at the White River Agency, near Fort 
Apache. 

Upon reaching the forage station at the Black 
River crossing, where I had stopped the year before, 
we found it abandoned, and as there yet remained 
a couple of hours of daylight we pushed on. Near 
dusk we arrived at the other forage station, where 
the murders had occurred the previous week. We 
took possession, installed our cots and used the stove 
to cook our meal on, and the table and chairs. It 
was undeniably somewhat gruesome and eerie to 
sit in this room so redolent with the recent tragedy. 
Upon discovering the bullet holes in the thin 
wooden walls, the topic of conversation naturally 
dwelt upon the crime, its execution and the sordid 
motives for it. 

However, upon lying down on my cot I went 
to sleep soundly, but was awakened during the night 
by a scratching sound which readily enough might, 
in view of the environments, be termed ghostly by 
anyone with nerves. I ascribed the cause to rats 
scampering over the rafters above the paper-covered 
ceiling of the room, but my two companions on this 
trip acknowledged that they had cold chills running 
up their backs from fright. 



Forest Fires 

I NEVER had either the time or inclination 
to scale Longs Peak, which towers above 
all the sublime surrounding mountain apexes, 
with its majestic summit 14,255 feet above the tides 
of the ocean and its sheer precipice thousands of 
feet high, facing the east, in the Rocky Mountain 
National Park in Colorado. But one summer, 
while we had pitched our camp on Glacier Creek, 
in the park, I did undertake a hike to Loch Lake, 
nestling at the foot of a glacier coming off Taylor 
Peak. This entailed a walk, scramble and climb of 
some sixteen miles from an elevation of about nine 
thousand feet at our camp to some twelve thousand 
feet at the lake. 

The trail at one place passed through a section 
which some years previously had been burned over 
by a forest fire, the stark, dead and naked trunks, 
standing erect, bearing incontestable testimony to 
the millions of dollars of damage, direct and indi- 
rect, which is caused each year to our invaluable 
forest areas by the sheer ignorance and frequently 
criminal negligence of builders of camp fires. As 
growing trees are the most beautiful work of nature, 
the sight of a forest "burn" leaves at the same time 
a deep sadness and a hot indignation at the careless- 
ness which, through sheer laziness, selfishness or 
ignorance, caused this arson of a landscape, destroy- 
ing in a few hours millions of living wonderful 
trees that, by its slow processes, nature had taken 
several centuries to create and which it would take 
more hundreds of years to replace. 

137 



138 FOREST FIRES 

Thousands upon thousands of acres of valuable 
forests are destroyed by fires annually in the United 
States, even though of late years the rangers of the 
many National Forests through eternal vigilance 
and experience save other thousands of acres from 
a similar fate. From a crow's-nest built in a tall 
tree on a summit or from the top of an observation 
tower, a ranger spots the first column of smoke, 
which, by means of range-finders and compass direc- 
tions telephoned in to the chief ranger's office from 
two or more stations, is accurately located. IVIen 
with axes and shovels hurry to this location and by 
the expediency of removing trees which would be in 
the path of the fire or by shoveling sand or earth 
in incipient blazes, innumerable small fires are ex- 
tinguished which, if given a free scope, would have 
the potentiality of destroying thousands of acres of 
fine forest. 

Enos A. Mills, the author-naturalist of Longs 
Peak Inn, in the Rocky Mountain National Park, 
has more eloquently described a forest fire in his 
book, "The Spell of the Rockies," than perhaps 
anyone else. To know this quiet and reserved man, 
with his deep knowledge of growing things and his 
sublime love for the out-of-doors, which for the 
Rocky Mountain region parallels that of John Muir 
for the Sierra Nevadas, is a privilege. 

When I drove my car up to his home he was 
much concerned about my dog Pan, as he feared 
that the chipmunks about the place would be fright- 
ened. These beautiful little rodents were so tame 
that they would feed out of his hand and crawl 
over his clothes. The blue jay, which had its nest 
on the porch, would pay little or no attention to 



FOREST FIRES 



139 



the human beings in near proximity. It is a dehght 
to know Mills; his books, with their strong tang of 
the glorious outdoors, are like an invigorating tonic 
to an invalid; his home and surroundings are an 
inspiration. 

I have seen the dispiriting sight of forest burns 
in many States, from the forests of Maine and the 
Adirondacks to those of the Rockies, Bitter Roots, 
Cascades and Sierra Nevadas, and I have for days 
traveled through a pall of smoke which often was 
carried hundreds of miles by the wind. From 
mountain summits 1 have seen the whirling columns 
of the thick smoke, at times shot through by leaping 
flames, but only once have 1 been in such close 
proximity to the actual nature tragedy that the heat 
and ashes became oppressive and almost blinding 
and the roar of the approaching catastrophe indi- 
cated that there was real danger to linger in the 
region. This was in northern Minnesota. 

We were traveling along a rough road through 
the forest. Occasional clearings with crude cabins 
testified to the efforts of homesteaders to create pro- 
ducing fields. An oppressive heat had been in evi- 
dence for some miles and a smoke, which smelled 
of burnt wood, had come on with the wind and 
became thicker as we progressed. Approaching a 
clearing, we met a team coming in our direction 
at a gallop. In the farm wagon was a homesteader 
and his family. He pulled up short and admon- 
ished us to turn back at once, as a forest fire was 
coming rapidly in our direction and if the wmd 
should increase in force would drive the sweeping 
flames with incredible speed. 

Without stopping to see if we heeded his advice, 



140 FOREST FIRES 

he started up his team of horses and had soon disap- 
peared, going at top speed. I hesitated for a time 
in spite of the thickening smoke and the farmer's 
advice, thinking that after all we would not be in 
the path of the fire and to turn back would mean 
the abandonment of the inspection of a route which 
I was very anxious to cover. However, when I 
saw a herd of deer cross the clearing ahead with 
long, frightened bounds I realized that they were 
undoubtedly the advance column of an army of all 
sorts of game and wild animals, whose instincts 
told them of the approaching danger probably more 
intelligently than the mere speculations of human 
beings. With considerable trouble we managed to 
turn the car around in the narrow road and were 
soon back-tracking our trail with all the speed the 
narrow and rough road allowed us to use safely. 
In three or four miles the smoke had become so 
thick and the ashes carried on the hot wind so 
blinding that both seeing and breathing became a 
matter of considerable difficulty, and shortly we 
could hear the awful roar of the fire as it leaped 
forward. 

With the throttle in the last notch and the car 
careening perilously, wobbling over the rough road 
like a drunken man, we fortunately gained open 
country and freedom from danger only a short dis- 
tance ahead of the holocaust. I often shudder to 
think what would have happened if by some mis- 
chance we should have had a puncture or hit a 
stump in the road, or anything else should have 
happened to prevent us from maintaining our speed 
or cause us perforce to stop. 



A Close Call 

DURING the pioneer days of motoring in 
the West, the absence of highway bridges 
over many of the larger rivers caused many 
hardships and frequently much added mileage for 
the motorists who ventured into the more remote 
regions. Usually fords were available for horse- 
drawn vehicles, but these were often too deep or 
with too treacherous bottom to serve motor cars, 
especially if the water were a little higher than 
low mark. Thus I have been compelled to cross 
railroad bridges, bumping my way across on the 
ties, on several occasions when It was absolutely 
essential to obtain accurate distance measurements 
along a projected motor highway and making a long 
detour to find a better crossing was inexpedient. 

In this way I have crossed the Colorado River 
into California at Needles and at Parker, when 
there were no highway bridges across this stream Its 
entire length, while now there are two such bridges 
on the main trunk-line highways, at Needles and 
at Yuma. I have also crossed railroad bridges 
across the Rio Grande at San Pedro, New Mexico, 
and the Little Missouri River at Medora, North 
Dakota, but the only time that such an adventure 
entailed a risk and in fact a real danger was when 
I attempted to cross a railroad bridge over the 
Powder River near its confluence with the Yellow- 
stone River, In Montana. 

At this place there was a ford which ordinarily 
could have been negotiated with a motor car, but 
a flood had caused such a rise of the water that an 

141 



142 A CLOSE CALL 

attempt to cross by fording was out of the question. 
By making a detour of over fifty miles we could 
have crossed the stream by a bridge, but that expe- 
dient did not appeal to me, so 1 presented creden- 
tials, which I had fortunately provided myself with, 
to the boss of the railroad section gang from the 
general superintendent of the railroad. These com- 
manded any employee of the railroad to lend me 
any assistance in reason for which I might ask. 

As the grade of the track was quite high and 
steep it was late afternoon, even by the help of a 
half dozen husky section men, before we had the 
car up on the ties. 1 was then told that a train 
was due within less than an hour, and that we had 
better make haste across the thousand-feet-long 
trestle bridge spanning the roaring current which 
raced some thirty or more feet below. As I ex- 
pected to cross in fifteen or twenty minutes, I sent 
my wife across on the hand car with the section 
foreman and his gang, which was composed of 
reliable-looking Swedes. 

A storm had been threatening for a couple of 
hours and by the time we were less than half way 
across the bridge, bumping very carefully and very 
slowly across, with less than eight inches between 
tlie tires on one side and the abyss below, the storm 
broke with intense fury. The first blasts were so 
strong that 1 feared at iirst that we would be blown 
ofi the trestle, there being no guard rail or other 
protection. In a few minutes the rain began falling 
in sheets and the lightning played in continuous 
flashes. The wet rubber tires and the wet ties made 
a combination which, in connection with the hori- 
zontal sheets of pelting rain, made our situation 



A CLOSE CALL 143 

worse than precarious, especially when we could not 
forget that a train was soon due in a direction 
opposite to that we were going. 

My driver got so nervous that I took the wheel 
and he walked ahead a tie at the time, turning and 
motioning to right or left by signalling with his 
hands in order to keep me going straight ahead and 
not to slip overside. This, of course, was mighty 
slow work and the tension became almost strong 
enough to have unstrung anybody's nerves. It 
seemed to me that we had been hours jolting along 
since we entered the trestle, when I distinctly heard 
the whistle of a train in a lull of the storm, though 
either on account of the storm or a curve I could 
not see the headlights. Screaming to the driver to 
run ahead as fast as he could and never mind me, 
1 stepped on the accelerator with a silent prayer on 
my lips, and the car shot ahead the short remaining 
distance of the trestle, and then we could see the 
headlights of the approaching locomotive. With 
the aid of a small board the car cleared the track 
and landed in the ditch just as the train shot by 
with a scream and a roar which sounded positively 
unearthly, combined as it was with the noise of the 
storm. My wife, who was numb with fright, main- 
tained afterwards that the hoarse roar and clatter 
of the speeding locomotive sounded to her as a 
scream of baffled rage and disappointment uttered 
by some giant supernatural evil monster. 

While this experience was almost melodramatic, 
it ended with a touch of humor which soon made 
us forget our dangerous adventure. The section 
hands willingly lent us their aid, though drenched 
to the skin as we all were, and in a short time we 



144 A CLOSE CALL 

were ready to proceed. I knew that the trail should 
be a short distance — say a quarter of a mile or less 
— to the left, so headed cross country in that direc- 
tion. Probably on account of the blinding rain I 
missed the trail and finally we decided to stop, eat 
some crackers and sardines from our commissary, 
and snatch what sleep we could in our wet clothes 
while remaining in the seats of the car, as erecting 
camp in such weather was impracticable. 

When daylight broke we found, on looking 
through the curtains, that we were less than a 
hundred feet from the door of a ranch house, the 
only house for miles around. Kind providence had 
guided us to a safe and comfortable haven, as the 
folks of the ranch most hospitably took us in and 
afforded us an opportunity to dry our clothes and 
regaled us with a wonderful breakfast of flapjacks, 
eggs and coffee. We spent the balance of the day 
and the next night here, in order to give the soil 
a chance to dry before again proceeding, and besides 
we needed the rest after our nerve-racking expe- 
rience. 

A fine highway bridge now spans the Powder 
River where the ford w^as, as similar bridges now 
afford safe crossings over the larger rivers on prac- 
tically all the main transcontinental motor routes. 



Indian Slough 



ON TAKING the first truck on a trans- 
continental hike we had eventually, after 
all sorts of hardships and experiences 
which at times seemed almost to block our efforts 
to succeed in our undertaking, reached the banks 
of the Colorado River at Ehrenburg. California, 
the goal and reward for all our strenuous adven- 
tures on the trip, was only just across a compara- 
tively narrow stream, and yet so far away that we 
for a while despaired of reaching it. As at that 
time there were no highway bridges across the Colo- 
rado either at Needles or Yuma, I had laid our 
course for Ehrenburg in order to cross by the ferry 
at that point, believing from a previous experience 
with it that it would be large enough to get our 
seven-ton truck across. 

However, we learned upon reaching the little 
river town, after crossing the desert from Phoenix, 
that the large flat-bottomed scow, which in connec- 
tion with a gasoline launch had constituted the ferry 
when I crossed here a few months previously, had 
been swept away by a flood and that only a very 
much smaller scow or float was available. The 
citizens of the little burg, which consisted of three 
saloons and a store, maintained that there would 
be no use attempting to take the truck across with 
the available equipment, but on looking the outfit 
over carefully I decided to risk it. 

The first two trips across took our load of gaso- 
line and oil barrels, lumber and much paraphernalia 
with which we were provided in order to overcome 

145 



146 INDIAN SLOUGH 

difficulties; also seats, hood and all parts of the 
engine which could be removed, in order to lighten 
the final load. With great care the truck itself 
was finally gotten aboard, and almost swamped the 
little scow with its weight. The current was so 
swift that we had to proceed up stream close to the 
Arizona bank for more than a mile before we dared 
to attempt shooting across. We were a mighty 
anxious crew when the ferryman headed his launch 
towards the center of the stream and his Indian 
helpers with long sweeps steered a course diagonally 
across. 

Luck was with us and we made the promised 
land in safety, but found great difficulty in discover- 
ing a favorable landing place on the brush-grown 
bank of the river. However, at least we were 
ashore, in the thick brush, it is true, but the solid 
earth underneath our feet felt good. While the 
Indians chopped away the brush to enable us to get 
away from the bank of the stream the rest of us 
got busy assembling our outfit, which took us 
twenty-four hours to accomplish. Less than half a 
mile from the river we met our greatest disappoint- 
ment, which looked to us like a real Waterloo. A 
recent overflow of the river had left enough water 
in a large depression or slough to form a veritable 
lake, dotted with huge trees and about five feet deep 
in the center. It extended for miles up and down 
parallel to the river and, as the bottom was a slimy 
ooze, there really seemed nothing to do at first but 
to sit down for a few weeks and let the slough dry 
up by the slow method of evaporation. 

After studying the situation for a while, I partly 
disrobed, made a bundle of my clothes, and with this 



INDIAN SLOUGH 147 

on my head waded and swam across the ill-smelling 
water, which was almost thick with decayed vege- 
table matter. Calling to my companions that I 
would be gone two or three hours and for them to 
amuse themselves as best they could by playing tag 
with the millions of mosquitoes which drifted about 
in clouds, I dressed and proceeded to the town of 
Blythe, a private irrigation project, four miles dis- 
tant. It being Sunday, I found a dozen men about 
with nothing to do but take it easy after the week's 
work. As they constituted the chamber of com- 
merce of the embryonic metropolis, I laid our pre- 
dicament before them and received the proffer of 
all the mules and steel cable, formerly used for 
well-drilling, that I might stand in need of if I 
could show them how to succeed in getting the 
heavy truck across the mucky bottom of the slough. 

To tell the truth, I did not have much faith in 
accomplishing the task, but, making up my mind 
that the truck might as well perish by drowning 
as we from mosquito bites, I assumed an air of 
confidence and we brought the mules and parapher- 
nalia to the edge of the slough, which was some 
six hundred feet wide at the narrowest point. I 
realized that it would be useless to try to haul the 
heavy vehicle across the soft bottom by a direct pull 
and that multiplying block and tackle had to be 
rigged. This was difficult to accomplish on account 
of the big trees in the slough, which necessitated a 
zigzag course. 

We buried a dead-man in the trail. For the 
benefit of those that do not know the meaning of 
this rather gruesome phraseology, I will explain that 
a dead-man means a stout log buried at some depth 



148 



INDIAN SLOUGH 



across the direction of the pull. To this the long 
steel cable was fastened, to serve as an anchor 
against which to exert the force of the pull. Then 
another swim across the nasty pool to superintend 
the fastening of the block and tackle to the front 
axle and to the first tree, which stood in the water 
about a hundred feet from the edge and directly 
in the path chosen for our crossing. When all was 
ready four mules were hitched to the cable, and the 
word was passed to go ahead. Slowly the big truck, 
from which of course had been removed magneto 



■--^S^ifer-I 



)} t% 




The crossing of Indian Slough on the Colorado River, 

near Blythe, California, ivith the first transcontinental 

truck, closely resembled submarine ii-ork 



and carburetor, moved ahead and gradually dipped 
deeper and deeper into the slimy water. 

When it was nearing the tree to which the tackle 
was fastened, the mules had walked over four hun- 
dred feet from the dead-man and we had to make 
a new hitch, lengthening the tackle-ropes and mak- 



INDIAN SLOUGH 149 

ing fast to another tree, at a different angle and 
another hundred feet ahead. To make this new 
hitch was no easy undertaking, as it had to be done 
an arm-length under water ; but soon we again pro- 
ceeded. Deeper and deeper the truck went down, 
until by the time another new hitch had become 
necessary the top of the radiator and hood was 
just awash. To make the change of hitch on the 
front axle this time was quite another proposition, 
as two men had to entirely submerge themselves to 
accomplish it. It took a long time, but it was 
finally done and again w^e moved ahead, still going 
deeper for every foot. 

When for the third time the tackle-ropes had to 
be lengthened, the water reached the knees of the 
man who sat in the driver's high seat to steer. After 
five different changes in our course and procuring 
new hitches, we eventually pulled up on the coveted 
shore. The big vehicle was received by a hearty 
cheer from all throats and we all felt that we had 
accomplished a real feat. The men from Blythe 
went home and in three hours we followed under 
our own power, little the worse for our experience 
except that the truck was covered by ill-smelling 
filth and we all stood much in need of a bath, which 
we duly took by the bucketful at the town pump. 

I learned that the swamp was called the Indian 
Slough, and I do not think that anyone connected 
with taking the truck across it will ever forget the 
experience. 



The Gospel and Good Roads 

IN MANY sections of the West the most ener- 
getic workers for the Good Roads movement 
are the clerg}'. The gospel of good roads is 
consistently being preached by these ministers, be 
they Protestant or Catholic, and as these workers 
wield a potent influence in their respective sections, 
they prove an especially valuable aid in intelligently 
convincing their fellow citizens of the value and 
local economics of improved highways. And let me 
say right here I have found these men the best of 
scouts and congenial companions on many a strenu- 
ous pathfinding trip. 

The Rev. Father Vabre, at Flagstaff, Arizona, 
he of the sunny smile and ever-unruffled disposition, 
has scouted all over arid Northern Arizona with me 
among whites and Indians. He has been a powerful 
factor in helping to bring about the result that to- 
day the National Old Trails route is graded and 
provided with substantial concrete bridges across 
canyons and sandy washes through a considerable 
part of his- sphere of influence. And it must be 
remembered that this is a sparsely settled region, 
there often being forty miles between settlements 
and no houses between. The Rev. Father Dc 
Richemont, at St. John's, in central Eastern Ari- 
zona, a scholarly man of great influence in his 
section, has also been a powerful help towards the 
improvement of the road in his vicinity. 

In New Mexico the Rev. Dr. H. M. Shields, 
of Dawson, has taken an unusually active part in 
bringing about road betterment in a region where 

150 



THE GOSPEL AND GOOD ROADS 



151 



the people were peculiarly influenced by the leader- 
ship of their spiritual adviser. The Rev. Dr. S. M. 
Johnson, of Roswell, New Mexico, has become an 
interstate preacher of the good-roads gospel. He 
is ever willing to travel any distance to attend meet- 
ings where boosters are organizing bodies for the 
improvement of highways. As he is a scholarly, 
eloquent man, with a thorough knowledge of his 
subject, results of a satisfactory nature usually 
follow in his wake. 

Over in Texas, the Rev. Dr. T. P. Grant, of 
Brady, has stumped the whole State in advocacy of 
road-bond issues, and to what end may be judged by 
the fact that Texas has invested millions in road im- 
provements and the good work is still going on. 
Dr. Grant was one of the best companions on a 
motor hike I have ever had the pleasure to meet. 




The high plateaus of Northern Neix) Mexico and 

Arizona are frequently visited by an early autumn snoiv- 

storm, causing much arduous ivork for those motorists 

luho happen to be afield at the time 



152 THE GOSPEL AND GOOD ROADS 

Over in Colorado, there is a quiet, reserved 
Catholic priest at Idaho Springs, the Rev. Father 
McCabe, than whom none has worked harder, and 
with more splendid results, to develop the Berthoud 
Pass route of the Midland Trail, the Roosevelt 
National Highway. The elimination of the steep 
and rough grade across Floyd Hill on this route 
and the building of a good State highway through 
this section must be placed to the credit of Father 
McCabe. 

I could keep on mentioning specific instances in 
nearly all of the Western States of the well-directed 
zeal of clergymen towards similar satisfactory local 
results. It is merely my intention in this chapter to 
acknowledge the splendid cooperation of these men 
and to call well-merited attention to and show ap- 
preciation of their unselfish public-spiritedness. 



Kicking Up the Dust of Ages 

OUR wonderful Southwest is unquestionably 
one of the most interesting regions of the 
United States, looked at from any number 
of angles. Certainly I have found it of absorbing 
interest in my pathfinding trips. As its twenty-six 
Indian pueblos, every one a self-governing little 
republic, inhabited by self-supporting and self- 
respecting folks, living the life of their ancestors 
for uncounted generations, as well as its nearly a 
dozen Indian tribes living on reservations, its turbu- 
lent history, its ancient civilization, its scenery, cli- 
mate and resources, are recounted in my book, 
"Through the Land of Yesterday," I will here only 
briefly mention some of the prehistoric ruins in that 
region. 

At various places adjacent to the National Old 
Trails route in New Mexico and Arizona, and 
reached by ancient trails, some of them too rough 
for motor cars, are many of the most interesting 
archaeological remains in the world. The wonder 
of it is that these are comparatively little known — 
in fact, practically unknown — to the vastly greater 
proportion of Americans. And yet quite a number 
of them are easily reached by motor car and are 
close to settled communities. 

Thus the wonderful ruins of the vast communal 
house of Tyu'onyi are located in the canyon of Rito 
de los Frijoles, only thirty-five miles from Santa Fe, 
itself probably the most picturesquely interesting 
city in the United States and the second oldest. 
This communal house contained originally seven 

153 



154 KICKING UP THIi DUST OF AC.I-S 




"Compra Llena," buy ivood, is the cry heard, like the call 

of the "old clothes" man of Eastern cities, in Santa Fe, 

Neiv Mexico, as the Indians drive their laden burroivs 

through the streets 



hundred rooms and was a true prototype of the 
modern city apartment house. Nearby in the same 
canyon are hundreds of clifif and cave dwellings 
which tell the student of archaeology about a civili- 
zation reaching so far back into the hoary pre- 
historic past that even no conjectures as to their age 
are ventured by the learned men who dig, excavate, 
study and draw conclusions from the pottery, skele- 
tons, basketry and other remains of those who once 
upon a time occupied these tiny dwellings. The 
kiva, or sacred ceremonial underground chamber, 
excavated on a shelf a hundred and fifty feet up 
the sheer cliff side of the canyon, is a rare treat to 
visit. This region forms the Bandolier National 
Monument, and the Government custodian, Judge 
Abbott, will most cheerfully guide anyone up to this 
venerable eyrie. 



KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 



155 



It is said that about twenty thousand prehistoric 
ruins and cave-dwellings are located in the Santa Fe 
region, some of the most interesting of which, in 
addition to those in Rito de los Frijoles, are Puye, 
Tsankawi, Navawi and Tchrege. 

At Chaco Canyon, northeast of Gallup, there are 
some ten great ruins, the largest of which is Pueblo 
Bonito, with more than a thousand rooms. 

On the Navaho Indian reservation in Arizona 
there are a number of most wonderful ruins, as 
those of the justly famous scenic Canyon de Chelly, 
near Chinle, forty miles north of Fort Defiance. 
Here are about two hundred ruins, of which the 
"White House," conspicuously white against the 
somber background of a shallow cave, is best known. 
Also within less than thirty miles from the trading 
post of Tyende or Kayenta are three remarkable 




There are a feiv hairpin turns that ])ntlier cars ivith a 
long loheelhase on the road doivn the beautiful La Bajada 
cliff ni;ar Santa Fe, Neiv Mexico. The pathfinder used 
the old road seen to the right, and it ivas "some" road 



156 KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 

ruins : Betatakin, a veritable city in a splendid state 
of preservation, and only discovered about ten years 
ago; Inscription House, an ancient ruin, in one 
room of which is found an inscription scratched on 
the wall by some prowling, adventurous member of 
one of the roving bands of Spaniards w^ho in the 
sixteenth century ventured far into the most remote 
corners of the Spanish province of New Grenada, 
as the country was then called, in search of fabled 
treasure; Keet-seel, or pottery house, a ruin clinging 
to the very side of a precipitous cliff. These three 
ruins constitute the Navaho National Monument. 

In the southwest portion of Colorado are the 
Hovenweap ruins, not yet excavated but said to be 
especially interesting. Not far away is the Mesa 
Verde National Park, jutting into the Southern 
Ute Indian reservation. This region is reached via 
the Spanish Trail-Mesa Verde Highway from 
Pueblo and contains some of the most w^onderful 
ruins of the entire Southwest. The most conspicu- 
ous among these are the Cliff Palace, Spruce Tree 
House, Balcony House, Sun Temple and Peabody 
House, all excavated and accessible. Near the town 
of Aztec, in northeastern New Mexico, on the same 
highway and not far from Mesa Verde, are the 
Aztec ruins now in course of exploration and said 
to be of paramount interest. 

One of the most beautifully situated prehistoric 
ruins in Arizona is that of the Tonto National 
Monument, a mile south of the Apache Trail and 
only five miles east of Roosevelt Dam. These ruins 
are especially easy of access and are located up the 
side of a canyon which in itself is a veritable garden 
of numerous varieties of beautiful desert cactus. 
The light color of these ruins contrast so con- 



KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 



157 







/w /rc/«/ 0/ "///^ o/J<?j/ //owj^" in the United States, 
located on a narroiv street in Santa Fe, Neiv Mexico, and 
said to date from 1530. It is of adobe construction- 
mud and straiv — and ivas formerly t'wo stories in height. 
A Mexican family makes it its home 

spicuously with the dark cave back of them that, 
from a distance, they have the appearance of bright 
marble structures. Montezuma Castle, south of 
Flagstaff, is another ruin of splendid picturesque- 
ness. Then there are the easily accessible cliff- 
dwellings in Walnut Canyon, only nine miles from 
Flagstaff, many ruins of large community houses 
near Tempe and Mesa, in the Salt River valley, 
and literally thousands of smaller ruins scattered 
throughout the entire northern part of New Mexico 
and Arizona. 

Indeed, searching for possible automobile routes 
in this entrancing "Land of Yesterday" was liter- 
ally kicking up the dust of ages along prehistoric 
trails, often alongside paths worn ankle deep by the 
moccasined feet of countless generations of forgotten 



158 



KICKING UP THE DUST OF AGES 



races. And to think some of our people go to Egypt 
and other eastern countries, drawn there by the 
magnet of the mystery of the ancient, when we have 
in our own country ruins rivalling in interest and 
probably in age those of any country on the 
Mediterranean. If they w^ant the foreign flavor, 
surely the language, costumes and customs of the 
swarthy races of our own Southwest can satisfy the 
most curious in this respect. But then we, who as 
a nation are such live advertisers of our products, 
have curiously enough failed to give the wide pub- 
licity to our own scenic archaeological and ethno- 
logical attractions which they deserve and which 
will some day be done. Then the harvest of gold 
from the restless roaming tourist will surpass the 
combined returns from all the other resources of 
the Southwest. 



^m 




The Canyon of the Salt River, near Roose-velt Dam, 

Ariz., is most rugged and picturesque. It is thickly 

dotted ivith giant Saguaro cactus 



Sectional Rivalry 

IN UNITY there is strength. This old adage 
is often lost sight of by rival contenders for 
the honor of being located on a particular 
trunk-line motor route which may be projected 
through a section of country where either one of 
two or more communities may offer equal advan- 
tages for the location of such a route. While a 
healthy and sportsmanlike rivalry is commendable 
and frequently causes the building of two routes 
where only one was in contemplation, it is unfortu- 
nately too often the case that this rivalry assumes 
the nature of acrimonious recriminations and causes 
such a hatred and intolerable situation that a route 
has been located through a territory where its loca- 
tion would benefit neither contestant. An award of 
this kind, with which I have been identified more 
than once, reminds one of the situation some years 
ago in Arizona, when Prescott and Tucson fought 
so hard and with such bitterness for the location 
of the State capital that Phoenix was chosen as a 
compromise, thus causing both the contenders to 
lose out. 

Well-known examples of sectional rivalry be- 
tween cities are those of Seattle and Portland, 
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Dallas and Fort Worth, 
and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the latter 
case the feeling has spread so that now it is North- 
ern California against Southern California, to the 
serious detriment of the whole State. It is often 
claimed that the Californians are a mighty self- 
opinionated lot and rather hold that they are the 

159 



160 SECTIONAL RIVALRY 

tail that wags the dog, meaning the rest of the 
United States, and that this sectional pride is about 
the only thing upon which the Northern and 
Southern Californians agree. 

Personally, I think that California as a unit and 
an integral part of these great United States would 
find it altogether to its advantage to pull together 
in all things, as the State has riches and glories 
enough to go around and to spare. It can well 
afford to reach out the welcome hand of hospitality 
to all visitors, whatever part of the State they enter 
first, and its citizens, as Californians, not Southern 
or Northern Californians, place every facility at 
their disposal to visit the many wonderful attrac- 
tions all over the State. I think that the develop- 
ment of a network of good highways within the 
commonwealth, a matter upon which the two sec- 
tions seem to agree and cooperate, will eventually 
do away with any sectional bitterness and will bring 
about a tolerance and unity of general efforts which 
must inevitably redound to the great benefit of all 
sections. 

Texas is so cumbersomely unwieldy that it is not 
closely enough knitted together on many matters 
that should be made the concern of all parts of the 
State. This is largely due to the climatic differ- 
ences and consequent conflicting interests of its ex- 
treme sections, where the climate ranges from the 
sub-tropical of the gulf coast to the severe winters 
of the plains. Again the improvement of highways, 
which will make intercommunication between the 
most remote corners of the vast commonwealth easy 
and cause a better understanding of the problems 
in each section, will eventually make one entity of 




The perpendicular cliffs of the Grand Rnyr in Colorado 
are frequently split as by a gigantic cleaver 



162 SECTIONAL RIVALRY 

them all and cause them to present a solid front, 
one for all and all for one, when problems of State- 
wide importance arise. 

Colorado is divided into two parts, the plains and 
the "Western Slope," the Rocky Mountains being 
the natural barrier between the two. In addition, 
an acrimonious jealousy has in the past existed be- 
tween Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo, all of 
them located on the east slope, where the plains and 
mountains meet. It has been claimed that the alti- 
tude at which these cities lie causes people to become 
high-strung or irritable and thus quarrelsome, and, 
as everyone knows, there is no quarrel more bitter 
than a family quarrel. However, I am happy to be 
able to record that since the advent of the good- 
roads era, when nearly all parts of the State on 
both sides of the mountains are easily accessible by 
motor car, this sectional rivalry and jealousy has 
almost entirely disappeared. It has been found that 
there is enough tourist traffic to satisfy every town, 
and more coming every year; hence Coloradans are 
now all putting their shoulders to the same wheel 
and heave together for the glory of and to the great 
benefit of the State. The splendid roads through 
their magnificent mountain region enable tourists to 
roam at will and enjoy a climate and scenery which 
are sure to induce them to stay longer than at first 
intended and to come again. All Colorado needs 
to do is to treat its visitors fairly, without greed, 
and its attractions will prove more valuable than 
all its mineral wealth. 

In the Northwest, the States of Wyoming, Mon- 
tana, Idaho and Washington pull together like a 
trained team of horses, and this unity of effort is 
increasingly effective in bringing to the attention of 



SECTIONAL RIVALRY 163 

money-spending travelers the many delights of this 
region. These efforts are, of course, much strength- 
ened by the location of the Yellowstone, Glacier 
and Mt. Rainier national parks within this region. 
The glad hand of welcome, hospitality and fair 
treatment are bringing about results in the North- 
west which the gradual expansion of good-roads 
systems is sure to increase to such a volume of 
tourists traffic that all communities will be bene- 
fited. Many sections of the United States could 
learn much to their advantage by studying and fol- 
lowing the example of the northwestern States. 

Now we come to Arizona and New Mexico. No 
one can accuse these States of being unprogressive 
or inhospitable, in fact, their characteristics are all 
to the contrary. Neverthelss it is undeniable that 
most communities in these commonwealths must be 
called to a large degree somewhat indifferent or at 
least lethargic in the matter of exerting special 
efforts to make the unquestionably most wonderful 
attractions of their States known to the outside 
world. They are generally perfectly willing that 
outsiders do this work for them or indifferent as 
to how it is done so it does not cost themselves spe- 
cial efforts or money. In saying this I know 
whereof I speak. It is doubtful if Arizona and 
New Mexico has had a better friend than myself. 
I have for years traveled through their territory, 
have written widely of the wonderful attractions, 
scenically, archaeologically and otherwise, of these 
States in magazines and books. While I have 
always met with a welcome, I have, on the other 
hand, received little or no cooperation in the 
exploitations of their attractions nor in fact noted 
any special appreciation of my efforts in their behalf 



164 



SECTIONAL RIVALRY 




These lu^veruuj sandstone monoliths, near St. Michaels, 
Arizona, are called the haystacks 



except from the little town of Springerville, 
Arizona. The noted writer, Charles F. Lummis, 
calls this country "the land of tomorrow," and per- 
haps these folks of the southwest will cooperate 
"tomorrow." Quien sabe? 

On the other hand it is a hopeful omen that 
Arizona and New Mexico have made a good start 
in the building of roads that are fast making its 



SECTIONAL RIVALRY 



165 



attractions, some of which are unmatched anywhere 
on earth, easily accessible to motor tourists. The 
wonderful pueblos of the Rio Grande valley, the 
interesting prehistoric ruins of community houses 
and cHif dwellings, the many Indian tribes with 
their ceremonial dances, the Painted Desert, petri- 
fied forests, natural monuments, the Grand Canyon, 
the National Forests, the magnetic attractions of 
the Gila Desert, the Roosevelt and Elephant Butte 
irrigation dams, the fine fishing streams and hunting 
grounds and numerous other features to be found 
in these States, are nowadays within the reach of 
any red-blooded motor tourists. To increase the 
volume of the lucrative tourist traffic it is only 
necessary to make some intelligent and united efFort 
to call the attention of the world to these attrac- 
tions, and if this is done on a liberal scale these 
States will find their publicity efforts rewarded by 
an unprecedented stream of wealth rolling in on 
them. 

In this country the example of the New England 
States may be studied to good effect by Arizona and 
New Mexico, and if they should care to go further 
afield for more intensive studies, Italy, France and 
Switzerland would present many a wholesome 
lesson. 



Out JVest 

ONE of the most remarkable observations 
that one is forced to make when traveling 
around in the eastern part of our country, 
is the limited comprehension of the vast size and 
resources of the United States, often displayed by 
people whom one really expects to have a wider 
knowledge of the subject. I do not refer to the 
army of Americans of wealth, who can glibly tell 
you all about even the more remote corners of 
Europe, but who have never seen California, the 
Grand Canyon or the wonders of our National 
Parks, and either look rather bored at being told 
about them or look as if a recital of their beauties 
and wonders must be patiently endured or merely 
considered one of the expected "boasts" of their 
countrymen. One of the good things following the 
world war was the fact that as Europe was closed 
to these folks they were literally compelled, being 
people of leisure with few serious objects in life 
aside from traveling, to visit regions in the United 
States which they heretofore had thought too 
arduous to approach. 

This circumstance has brought an appreciation of 
their own wonderful country that has made them 
at the same time prouder Americans and staunch 
advocates of the "See America first" gospel. It is, 
however, the solid "middle class" people (as they 
are sometimes called), the farmer and tradesman, 
that frequently show such gross ignorance of the 
United States that one wonders at it in these days 
of compulsory schooling. It would be ridiculous 

166 



OUT WEST 



167 



if it were not such an evidence of smug indifference. 
Of course these conditions will mend in proportion 
as these people acquire the ownership of a motor 
car. This blessing of modern times, in my opinion, 
is proving itself the greatest educator in history, be- 
cause its use compels acquiring knowledge, first of 
one's own section, then of one's own State and 
finally, as the network of good roads spreads, of 
one's entire country, besides broadening one's vision 
of life and appreciation of the problems facing other 
regions outside of one's own. This education will 
have a powerful influence on our politics and tend 
to cultivate toleration and sympathy, and at the 
same time it will wipe out sectionalism. 

I well remember when once in the early days 
of motordom, the time when roads were all dirt 
roads and one spent more than half of his time on 
his back underneath the car, and thirty miles was 
considered quite a days ride, I stopped at a farm- 
house in eastern Connecticut to borrow some tools 
from a farmer, which I needed in tinkering wnth the 
car, the conversation turned on "Out West." I 
mentioned having traveled through our western 
states, but, of course, not in those early days, by 
motor. The farmer, rather conscious of some 
traveling himself, remarked that he also had been 
"Out West," to visit a brother that a generation 
before had moved there. More for the purpose of 
seeming polite than for any real interest in the sub- 
ject, I asked him what part of the west he had 
visited. To my utter amazement he proudly said, 
"in York State, near Utica." 

As a matter of fact this man was quite a traveler 
when one compared him with the thousands upon 
thousands of sturdy Americans who, at least up to 



168 OUT WEST 

very recent times, had never been outside of their 
own county, to say nothing of their State. Ingrow^n 
sectionalism and indifference to the welfare or needs 
of fellow citizens beyond their own narrow sphere 
of vision is traceable directly to this condition. Of 
all the modern methods of communication, tele^ 
graph, telephone, rural delivery of mail, interurban 
electric cars, railroad, newspapers and magazines, 
the strongest and most potent antidote to ignorance 
is the motor car, because it teaches while it gives 
pleasure and health, and thus is "easy to take." 



Convict Labor 

OUR Immensely fast-growing demand fur 
improved highways which call for the ex- 
penditure of hundreds of millions of dollars 
annually, has caused such a scarcity of labor, of the 
class which can be utilized for this purpose, that 
many of the States in the Union are using convicts 
to help fill the pressing want. In spite of the fact 
that no State has enough inmates in its penal insti- 
tutions, who can properly be used for roadwork, to 
affect the labor market, labor organizations have in 
some States selfishly adopted the rule of the dog 
in the manger and through politics prevented the 
utilization of convict labor on highway work or 
other public improvements. This stand not only 
does not benefit these organizations, but retards the 
construction of highways important to the State and 
deprives fellow human beings, often doing penance 
for relatively slight offences against society, of the 
outdoor life and healthy exercise that help to purify 
mind and body and fit them for better life when 
their terms are expired. 

There are two methods employed in applying 
convict labor to roadwork, the honor system, best 
exemplified in Colorado, where it was first intro- 
duced, and the system where the convicts work in 
striped suits, often weighted down by chains and 
guarded by men with cocked rifles, and herded into 
wheeled cages at night like wild beasts. 

Let us first consider how the honor system, so 
idealistically conceived with humanitarian purposes 
in view, really works in practice. Warden Tynan, 

169 



170 CONVICT LABOR 

of the Colorado State penitentiary at Canon City, 
must be given the credit of first using the honor sys- 
tem. Much needed improvements of highways 
across the mountain passes were so delayed and 
hampered by lack of labor that the State resolved 
to try the application of Mr. Tynan's scheme. 
Briefly this consisted in allowing short term pris- 
oners and trustees the privilege of living in healthy 
camps, working in the bracing pure air, using ordi- 
nary civilian clothes in place of the degrading 
prison uniforms, laboring without armed guards, 
and in addition being allowed a small daily wage 
for their work, thus laying up something against 
the day of release. From the standpoint of the 
State this accomplished much to be desired : the 
carrying on of needed improvements, making the 
convict earn his keep in place of being an expense to 
the commonwealth, and improving his morale so 
that when released he will be a better citizen and 
not as liable to again offend against the statute laws. 
From the standpoint of the convict the outdoor life, 
the escape from the confining prison walls, the 
healthy exercise, good food and the confidence 
shown in him by this unguarded and un-uniformed 
life make him see life in brighter colors and create 
better intentions for the future. As a result there 
has been practically no efforts to escape, and in the 
one or two cases which have occurred, the culprits 
who broke their given w^ords in this respect have, 
when caught, been ostracized by their fellow pris- 
oners and deprived of the privilege of further out- 
door work. This punishment has proved more 
potent than solitary confinement and other harsh 
means of handling recalcitrant offenders against 



CONVICT LABOR 171 

prison rules. I have on occasions visited Colorado 
convict road camps and joined the men at their 
meals. Their freedom from restraint or mental de- 
pression was most noticeable. They acted and 
talked naturally like free men. The benefits of 
this system was so evident that it needed no obtruse 
or statistical arguments to convince anyone. 

Now let us look at the other method of using 
convict labor as practised in some of the older south- 
ern states. The picture here is of a very different 
character. On one of my trips of investigation of 
routes to Florida some years ago, I encountered sev- 
eral convict road camps in three different states. At 
one of these camps a white man, the only one in 
the camp aside from the guards, was working among 
a gang of burly negroes. Upon inquiry I learned 
that his offense had been the terrible crime of get- 
ting drunk. And for this he, a Southerner with a 
Southerner's prejudice of acknowledging equality or 
associating with negroes, was made to suffer the, to 
him, unspeakable indignity of working in a chain 
gang of black men. After talking with him for 
some moments, I was convinced that this galling 
treatment had caused such a resentment in his other- 
wise normal mind that he stood in danger of becom- 
ing a confirmed criminal and foe of society when he 
again had his freedom. 

Among the dozen negro convicts at work at this 
camp five were serving life sentences, and conse- 
quently had no fear of taking chances of getting 
away, as they would be no worse off if they failed 
of success in the attempt. This gang was served 
with water by a diminutive negro boy, apparently 
some ten or eleven years old and, it seems almost 
unbelievable, this little chap had not only iron chains 



172 



CONVICT LABOR 




Some of the Southern States could ivell adopt the honor 

system of ^working convicts on the roads, thus doing 

aivay ivith public exhibition of the disgrace of felloii: 

human beings. 



running from a metal belt around his waist to iron 
rings about both his ankles, but carried a heavy iron 
ball, which was chained to his wrist on one hand, 
while with the other he carried the waterbucket. I 
learned upon inquiry that he was so treated because 
he was a confirmed thief, or at least, as one guard 
put it, ''liable to pilfer anything." Many of the 
prisoners had the waist-to-ankle chains, and all were 
dressed in conspicuous black and white striped suits 
and caps. Guards with shouldered rifles patrolled 
the roadside. At night these unfortunate beings, 
having served as a show for all passers along the 
road during the day, were confined in stout iron- 
barred cages on wheels which were moved along as 
the work progressed. 

The contrast between the two methods of util- 
izing convict labor here described is overwhelming. 
Both in application and effect they differ as light 
from darkness, as virtue from depravity. 



At the Grand Canyon 

SIX years ago I visited the Grand Canyon of 
Arizona for the first time in a motor car. 
At that time only an occasional local car 
from Flagstaff and one or two long-distance cars 
had ever been there. There were no garage accom- 
modations and no gasoline or oil to be had there at 
that time. As I did not care to leave my car out- 
doors over night on account of various valuable 
instruments of a scientific character, 1 persuaded 
the manager of El Tovar Hotel to arrange for its 
accommodation in the carriage barn. 

When 1 urged the manager to take steps to pro- 
vide an up-to-date garage as motorists were sure to 
come in ever increasing numbers in my footsteps, or 
rather tire-tracks, he maintained that the manage- 




While ours ivas one of the first long-distance cars to 

visit the Hopi House at Grand Canyon, Ariz., it is noiv 

visited by literally thousands of cars yearly 

173 



174 AT THE GRAND CANYON 

ment did not care for that kind of patronage, and 
anyway there would not be many motorists braving 
the wilds of Arizona. 

Two years later I again came to the Grand Can- 
yon by motor car, and what did I find? A large 
garage with modern equipment, which had that 
summer housed over twelve hundred cars. Fur- 
thermore, a large extension was being constructed 
to take care of the increasing tourist traffic arriving 
by motor car. And the management was mighty 
glad to see them coming too. 

Since the Grand Canyon has been made a 
National Park and will be connected with the 
National Old Trails Road with a good highway 
swarms of motor tourists will in coming years 
annually visit this most impressive natural scenery 
on the face of the globe, especially after some way 
has been found to pump water from the Colorado 
River in the bottom of the chasm to the rim, so that 
motor car campers may be properly cared for. 



Hazing the Lord 

ON ONE of my many trips across the United 
States we were accompanied by an Eng- 
lishman who was much interested in gather- 
ing "impressions" of the United States. He was a 
quiet, somewhat reserved young gentleman of very 
precise manners and was by us promptly called the 
Lord, for short. Out in Kansas some of the local 
people played a few innocent jokes on him, which 
he took in the best manner possible. Among these 
were such instances as inducing him to give a fourth 
of July speech to a large audience in a public park 
of one of the towns and allowing him the valued 
privilege of jerking open the door of the den whence 
the "usual" badger was supposed to rush out and 
engage in mortal combat with a "fierce" mongrel, a 
rather hackneyed practical joke practised on tyro 
tenderfeet. 

Down in Arizona he ventured the remark in a 
conversation with some local people that he had 
surely expected the West to be more "woolly," and 
that so far he had not seen a single one of the 
desperadoes, road-agents, gamblers and cut-throats 
which he had read about, and which were expected 
to roam about freely and ply their trade with 
impunity. The good people of Arizona were not 
going to let such a blot on their reputation remain, 
and staged a regular wild-west holdup, which was 
successfully pulled off in the southeast part of the 
state. In the most approved fashion two masked 
horsemen rode out from behind large boulders 
alongside the trail in a desolate section, and with 

175 



176 HAZING THE LORD 

leveled "six-guns" demanded "your money or your 
life." Of course everybody was in the joke but the 
Lord, so everybody elevated their hands, and like 
good sports, stood for having their loose change 
abstracted from their pockets. 

When the car arrived at the next town it was 
met by a committee, among whom were the two 
"robbers." At the hotel bar the Englishman's 
money, a modest sum, was freely spent on the 
visitors and everybody was happy, none more so 
than our foreign guest who told most circumstan- 
tially of the adventure, and cabled an account of it 
to London. He never did learn the real facts of 
the case, and even today is of the opinion that after 
all the west is some country for red-blooded expe- 
riences. 



Colorado Mutton 

ARRIVING at a Colorado ranch on one of 
my trips, the owner apologized for having 
nothing in the house but mutton to serve 
us. We assured him that mutton was certainly all 
right, and that we had brought our appetities with 
us. When the meal was served I discovered that 
the "mutton" was venison, and as I realized that it 
was the closed season for shooting deer, I praised 
the mutton and simulated ignorance of the real 
character of the food which, of course, was just 
what we were all expected to do. Not so our driver, 
who kept insisting that he had never tasted such 
mutton, and that it was the best he had ever eaten, 
but wanted to know what breed of sheep produced 
such juicy, palatable meat. Seeing that he would 
not be satisfied till he had the information safely 
tucked away in his head, the rancher told him, with- 
out a smile, that it was Rocky Mountain sheep. 
The driver often spoke of the delicious mutton pro- 
duced in Colorado from their mountain sheep. 



177 



The Queen of the Desert 

AT ONE of the small towns on the National 
Old Trails Road in the Mohave Desert, 
there lived a curious character, an old wo- 
man, generally called "Mama, queen of the desert." 
She was one of the pioneer "desert rats," w^ho came 
in with a prospecting party and settled in a small 
shanty town near the railroad. She opened a small 
store and looked after the occasional traveler who 
ventured into or came back from the Death Valley 
region, a mythical Eldorado, where gold was sup- 
posed to be plenty as berries on an elderberry bush, 
but whence most of the hardy prospectors, who 
hazarded the dangers of the trail into it, came back 
empty handed and often half demented with the 
sufferings endured in this well-named region. Many 
did not come back at all, and their bleached bones 
are whitening the floor of this terrible country, more 
than two hundred feet below sea level. To those 
who came back "Mama" was the good Samaritan, 
and in spite of her uncouth ways and careless garb 
was to them a glorified being. 

One night we arrived at this little settlement 
about ten o'clock, hungry and weary after a hot 
day's ride through the desert. As we wiggled our 
way through the deep sand of the main (and only) 
street, there appeared in the full glare of our head- 
lights a woman, barefooted and calico-mother- 
hubbard-dressed, who stopped in the middle of the 
track and kept waving her arms excitedly. This 
proved to be the "queen of the desert," of whom I 
had heard. She informed us that we had better stop 

178 



THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT 179 







No indeed, there is no snoiv on the ground here, only 

iL'hite alkali luhich covers the surface of one of the dry 

lake beds in the Mohave Desert in California 

over for the night, and that she could furnish us 
with good beds. She evidently was not going to 
let anyone get by without at least being apprised of 
the accommodations available. 

Assuring her that her hospitality was appreciated 
and would be accepted, I inquired about something 
to eat. To our disappointment she said there was 
no chance of appeasing our hunger until next day, 
when what she called "the hash-house," otherwise 
the restaurant, opened. I maintained that would not 
do at all, and "guessed" I could find something to 
eat somewhere, aside from the crackers and cheese 
which she finally offered us from the stock in the 
store. Evidently feeling that she knew her ground, 
she offered to bet that 1 could not, the stake being 
free beds or beds at double rate, according to who 
should win. 

Without taking up this sporting proposition, I 
approached a house, from the window of which 
shone the only light apparent in the town. This 
proved to be the railroad station with a telegraph 
operator on duty. Explaining to him our predica- 
ment he handed me a key and told me it would 



180 



THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT 



unlock the third house down the street. Here we 
would find an oil-burner cook stove and food in the 
pantry, ham, eggs, rolls, jam, and other good things. 
We were welcome to help ourselves and he only 
regretted he could not leave his post to come over 
and cook it for us in his batchelor home. 

"Mama" seemed much surprised at the result of 
my foraging expedition. While she went to prepare 
the beds we cooked a very satisfying meal in the 
home of this true gentleman of the wide places, who 
had shown such hospitality to strangers. He 
absolutely refused any recompense for the food con- 
sumed. We could only pay him with our thanks. 
Next morning "Mama," like a true sport, refused 
pay for her beds, because she had lost the wager, 
even though it had not been accepted by me. No 
argument could induce her to change her decision 
in this respect. 




The Moha-ve Desert is notj like the Great Salt Lake 

Desert or Death I'alley, merely a great sandy ivaste. 

It is studded ivith many ^'arieties of %'egetation, such as 

the creosote bushes and Yucca cactus shewn here 



Queen Victoria 

WHILE passing through Georgia on the 
Dixie Highway, we put up at the only 
hotel in one of the smaller towns. My 
wife inquired of the clerk if there was a chance 
to have some laundry done the next day, which we 
had planned to spend at this town. She was 
assured that it would be promptly arranged. Early 
next morning the clerk sent word up that Queen 
Victoria was down stairs and should he send her up. 
Having for the moment forgotten about the 
laundry, and thinking that this was supposed to be 
a joke at my instigation, my wife said she would be 
much honored to have her majesty grace our humble 
quarters with her presence. 

In a feW minutes a knock sounded on the door 
and my wife swung it wide open. There stood a 
coal-black negro woman with a wide grin showing 
gleaming white teeth and the white of her eyes shin- 
ing like two stars. Clutching her dress, one on 
each side were two tiny pickaninnies some four or 
five years old, curiosity and wonder depicted on their 
curly-topped little black faces. The woman said 
she was Queen Victoria, the laundress. The two 
kids were twins and named Abraham Lincoln and 
Jefferson Davis, while upon inquiry it was learned 
that the husband's name was George Washington. 
These were all given names, the family name being 
Munroe. Truly a historic and distinguished family, 
1 should say. 



181 



Tickling the Carburetor 

IN MAKING our way up a water-bar-infested 
steep road in the Green mountains of Vermont, 
we overtook a small car which was bucking its 
way in spasms, leaps and bounds ahead of us. At 
a place where the road curved, I noticed an old 
gentleman at the steering wheel, while a woman 
was breathlessly running beside the car, the hood of 
which was thrown back on one side. She had her 
arm stretched in under the hood and had quite a 
task keeping up with the erratic pace of the "horse- 
less carriage," anxiety being plainly depicted on her 
face, which was grimy from perspiration and lubri- 
cating grease. Having attained the top of the grade 
she sat down at the roadside to rest, apd I asked 
her why on earth she was doing the marathon and 
acrobatics on such a hot day and on such steep 
ground. With the most amusing expression of 
annoyance on her face she said that she did not see 
that the reason was any of my business, but if I 
wanted particularly to know, it was no family 
secret, and she was only "tickling" the carburetor. 
Later I saw the same pair leaving from the front 
of a barn which served as a garage in a small town, 
the old gentleman with a grim and determined ex- 
pression of do or die on his face and his hands 
grasping the steering wheel like grim death till his 
knuckles showed white, while the little woman was 
cranking away for dear life, till she finally suc- 
ceeded in starting "the pesky thing." 



182 



'Ware Handshaking 

THE Pueblo Indian either in order to show 
his friendliness or to indicate his familiarity 
with the white man's ways, I am not sure 
which, always insists on shaking hands when first 
meeting a white person, though I have never noticed 
him practice this custom among his own people. 
Unfortunately, a great many individuals of various 
tribes inhabiting the twenty-six scattered Pueblos of 
the Southwest are inflicted with trachoma, a con- 
tagious and reputedly incurable eye disease. For 
this reason all visitors to one of these little self- 
governing republics should use extreme care not to 
indulge in handshaking with the inhabitants pro- 
miscuously. 

On one occasion when we visited one of the 
Pueblos near Santa Fe, the cacique after vigorously 
shaking my gloved hand, went up to the car and 
stretched out his hand to my wife, who had not 
yet had time to put on her gloves when she saw him 
coming. Catching my eye she tucked her hands 
under the lap robe and made the excuse that she 
had a bruised finger, a necessary subterfuge in this 
case, as the man was nearly blind with trachoma. 
Most of his family were similarly afflicted, and 
they all wanted to shake hands. We had to use 
great care in our trips, which extended to all the 
Indian tribes in New Mexico and Arizona, and 
almost everywhere we found the red-lidded filmy 
eyes which indicate the presence of this dangerous 
disease. However, by taking proper precautions in 
the way of gloved hands and the use of disinfectants, 
the danger of infection may be avoided. 

183 



Prospectors 

ONE of the most interesting characters one 
meets in the arid regions of the southwest 
is the prospector. He is nearly always the 
personification of sunny optimism, especially the 
confirmed specimen of the species. I have spent 
many a pleasant evening at the campfire listening 
to the tales of fortune "almost found" by some of 
the old dyed-in-the-wool roamers of the desert. 

At one time we pitched camp at Winter's well 
on the Harquahala Plain between Phoenix and the 
Colorado river, and as we were busy about getting 
our supper ready, there came into the light of the 
campfire a diminutive burro laden down with grub 
sacks, picks and shovels. Immediately following 
was an old man of three score and ten years or 
more, who asked to share our fire with us, as the 
custom is in remote regions. Being assured that he 
was welcome, he busied himself preparing his frugal 
meal and was delighted when we offered him some 
fruit and spuds, as potatoes are generally called in 
that country. 

After our repast and with the pipes drawing well, 
the atmosphere very naturally called for tales of his 
wanderings, and he proved a very interesting recon- 
teur. For more than forty-five years he had roamed 
the mountain and desert regions between Canada 
and Mexico, and claimed to have located several 
fine mines, but always somebody else got away with 
the big fortunes made by these strikes, while he only 
fi^ceived a few hundred dollars. However, he had 
if ^i-ong hunch that there was gold at a certain place 

184 

£81 



PROSPECTORS 



185 



not far distant and was sure that he would be able 
to uncover it, and this time he would take care that 
no one cheated him out of it. Would I be interested 
in backing him in his search, it would only take a 
modest sum, a few hundred dollars? Having re- 
ceived manv similar invitations on other occasions 





f.. 



Northern i\ e^^ Mexico makes ideal camping ground, pro- 

'vided you carry enough ivater ivith you for your night's 

stop. There is plenty of ivood available and the climate 

is dry and bracing 

to grub-stake some of these consistent dreamers, who 
had sure things and would inevitably locate them 
"tomorrow," I found an excuse to decline the flat- 
tering offer. He did not seem the least dis- 
appointed at this, but regaled us with stories of dis- 
covery of ores, boom camps, the wild life in some 
of these and of hardships of the trail until a late 
hour. Next morning he found his hobbled burro, 
snugged his outfit, and with a pleasant smile on 
his wrinkled old face, bade us good-bye. 



186 



PROSPECTORS 



I have often wondered if the reaper perhaps over- 
took him, all alone, among the hills of the desert, 
without a chance of human companionship in his 
last hour. It is pretty certain that he would pass 
out still searching for the yellow metal which he 
always hoped to iind "tomorrow." I am quite con- 
fident that the anticipation of the search meant more 
to him and was more satisfying than the realization 
of a find could possibly be. 




Contrary to a natural expectation the Petrified Forest 
of Arizona has no standing trees. The beautifully 
colored, agatized trees and stumps are all prostrate on 
the ground. Some of the trees are of gigantic proportions 



Sharp Shooting 

PASSING through Wyoming on one of our 
trips we saw an unusual number of coyotes 
but luck seemed to run against me, either they 
were too far away or I missed them though I will 
admit I had on two occasions a fair chance of a good 
shot at them. As I am not altogether a bad shot 
with a rifle, though no prize-winning marksman, 
this puzzled me until I discovered that the sight 
on my rifle had been bent in some accidental way. 
However my good wife chided me considerably over 
my poor marksmanship and, though I appeared to 
take no notice of it, this nettled me. After straight- 
ening the bent sight, of which I made no mention, I 
felt sure of retrieving my lost reputation. 

While we were stopping for a bite of lunch in 
the shade of a butte, I discovered not far away, at 
least within easy range, the ears of a coyote just 
showing above a small bush. Grabbing my rifle I 
fired right into the middle of the bush. As I saw 
no animal running away from it I felt certain 
of having found the mark. Friend wife inquired 
somewhat sarcastically, 1 thought, what on earth I 
had shot at this time. I invited her to come along 
and I would show her. Far be it from me to boast, 
but I guessed I was not such a dub at shooting after 
all. Blythely she came along, and on reaching the 
bush there was mister prairiewolf, duly stretched 
out breathing his last, but imagine my mortifica- 
tion, upon discovering on closer examination, only a 
mangy coyote pup with one foot caught in a steel 
trap. The poor beast could not get away and was 

187 



188 



SHARP SHOOTING 




4 

i 

Overlooking "Hell's Half Acre," a ^'ast hole in the 
'volcanic ash deposits on Poivder Riz'er in Wyoming 

compelled to sit still while serving as an easy target. 
While of course I was glad to have been the means 
of putting the suffering animal out of its misery, I 
did not relish the laugh my companions had at my 
expense, especially as the subject was, as I thought 
unnecessarily and with undue relish, brought up for 
many a day afterwards. 



A Towns Disgrace 

AT A SMALL town in one of the western 
states, which I shall refrain from naming, 
^ where we arrived quite late one evening 
after an arduous day's battle with an exceedingly 
rough trail, we were very glad indeed to find a 
rather fine appearing hotel, though we were com- 
pelled to go to a restaurant for our supper on 
account of the late hour. After getting my com- 
panions assigned to their rooms and the baggage 
brought up, I strolled around the lobby and adjoin- 
ing rooms for a night-smoke before retiring. 

Hanging on the wall here and there, among heads 
of deer, elk, buffalo, mountain lion and bighorn 
sheep, I discovered several pictures of such an in- 
decent and lewd character that in utter disgust and 
more than a little angry, I remonstrated with the 
man behind the hotel counter for the brazen exhibi- 
tion of such chromos, adding that I thought the 
town as a whole shared with the proprietor of the 
hotel the responsibility and disgrace by allowing 
them to hang on the wall of a public hostelry. 

He leeringly told me that he was the proprietor, 
and what was I going to do about it. He dared me 
to touch them and "guessed" they would stay where 
they were as long as he wished it, as he was the 
town marshal and knew his six-gun. I told him I 
did not intend to take them down myself, but that 
I would make it my business to see that they were 
taken down and destroyed. Next morning I was 
waited on by a committee of town-people and asked 
to forget the occurrence. The hotel proprietor 

189 




It's no use talking. Black gumbo, luhen ivet, ivill almost 

make a church deacon sivear like an army mule skinner. 

Of course Weed chains are indispensable 



A town's disgrace 191 

they had locked in his room, as he had come to the 
conclusion, after much partaking of his own "snake 
poison," that nothing would satisfy him that glor- 
ious sunny morning but my blood. Yes sir, only 
real gore would appease his insulted self-esteem. 

Telling the committee that I would promise to 
make no mention of the matter to the state author- 
ities only on condition that they, in my presence, 
would remove the pictures from the wall and 
destroy them, they assured me that such an act 
would be unlawful, and anyway, the town marshal 
really was a dead shot, so they thought they had 
better not try it. 

When a few days later I arrived at the state 
capital, I called on the governor, with whom I was 
well acquainted, from having made several good 
roads boosting trips with him, and exacted from him 
a direct promise that the attorney-general would 
take steps to proceed immediately against the hotel 
proprietor for maintaining a public nuisance. I 
learned later that this was done and the offending 
pictures destroyed. I should not wonder but that 
the hotel man, who had to pay a fine for his offense 
against public decency, has ever since had one eye 
trained on the trail and his finger on the trigger. 
However, I have had no further occasion to visit 
that corner of the out-of-doors, as I became so pre- 
judiced against that particular community that 1 
did not favor establishing a motor route through it 



Gates 

IN Western Texas some of the cattle ranches are 
of enormous size. Since the day of the arrival 
of the barbwire, these ranches have nearly all 
been fenced and subdivided into large pastures. The 
day of the open range with its romance extolled in 
song and prose is past. To give an idea of the size 
of some of these fenced tracts, it is sufficient to say 
that one of them, near Midland, is one hundred 
and sixty-five miles across in one direction. 

Some of the main trunk line routes traverse sev- 
eral of these baronial estates and, as it of course is 
out of the question in that sparsely settled country 
to incur the expense of fencing both sides of the 
road, even though it may be a graded and culverted 
county highway, the routes are crossed at frequent 




A fair specimen of one of the one hundred and fifty-fi've 

gates to pass through on the route betiveen San Antonio 

and El PasOj Texas 

192 



GATES 



193 



intervals by fences between separate individual 
pastures. This condition necessitates gates. The 
gates are of all kinds of patterns, from the primitive 
so-called Montana wire gate to more elaborate con- 
traptions that may be opened from the driver's seat 
by pulling a handle, depending from a long beam 
or be bumped open- with the front tires of a motor 
car. 

On one of my trips between El Paso and San 
Antonio, we passed through a total number of one 
hundred and fifty-five gates, but then the distance 
is over seven hundred miles. Even then we 
traversed barely one-half of the width of this em- 
pire of a commonwealth. Of late years a new way 
to pass through a wire fence by motor car has been 
devised. This is called a cattle guard and consists 
of two troughs, placed apart a distance equal to the 
tread of a motor car. These troughs are placed 




'A 

The Texas method of passing through ivire fences ivith- 

out the use of gates. A most practical and timesaving 

device 



194 GATES 

above a pit dug directly on the line of the fence and 
a little to one side of the gate, so as to leave this 
available for wagon traffic. The fence is cut away 
entirely where the pit and the troughs cross it, thus 
leaving a free passage for motor cars crossing the 
pit on the troughs, while the pit prevents cattle from 
passing from one pasture to the other. These cattle 
guards are a great convenience. 



Historic Markers 

ON THE National Old Trails Route there 
are two very interesting markers. While 
here and there along the route where it 
crosses the actual path of the famous old Santa Fe 
Trail, substantial commemoration stone monu- 
ments' have been erected by the Daughters of the 
American Revolution in connection with the respec- 
tive state authorities, it is the two terminal monu- 
ments which really are of special interest. 

The first monument, at the beginnmg of the trail, 
is located at Old Franklin, Missouri, just across the 
Missouri River from BooneviUe. From this place 
the first trading caravans started on the long trek 
across the plains. At first in 1812, only pack-mules 
were used. In 1822 the first wagons, often drawn 
by twenty-four oxen, were driven over the trail. 
The journey in these early days was exceedingly 
dangerous. Frequent attacks by hostile Indian 
tribes on the caravans, often resulted in the mas- 
sacre of their entire personnel and the loss of the 
whole expedition. Finally the Indians got so bad 
that the government sent troops of cavalry along as 
a protection and established forts all along the line. 
The ruins of these forts and stockades are still in 
evidence at many places through Kansas. One of 
the places where these Indian attacks most often 
occured was at the crossing of Pawnee Creek. 
Many bloodcurdling accounts of these attacks by 
savage bands have been recorded, but many more 
are not part of recorded history, as often no one 
remained to tell the tale. 

195 



196 HISTORIC MARKERS 

The old trail is redolent of the deeds of such 
pioneers as Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Lucian Max- 
well, Dick Wooten, and later Buffalo Bill. At 
many places in southeastern Colorado may to this 
day be seen the grassgrown trail, over two hundred 
feet wide, with numerous deep and parallel wagon 
tracks, made during the heyday of the traffic over 
the route in the fifties. The building of the Santa 
Fe railroad in 1872 caused the abandonment of the 
trail as a trading route. Millions of dollars worth 
of goods was transported over it during its existence, 
and it once reached even beyond Santa Fe, down to 
Chihuahua, Mexico. 

In the old plaza at Santa Fe is the last and 
terminal monument of this historic route, marking 
its end at the old fonda, or hostelry where the 
travelers found a haven of rest after their arduous 
journey of some eleven hundred miles through a 
dangerous country. The old fonda is now burned, 
and in the smoke of the fire disappeared one of the 
most historic edifices in the United States. Across 
on the other side of the plaza is the governors palace, 
built in 1608, on the site of an old Pueblo ruin. 
This venerable building has housed Spanish, Pueblo, 
Mexican and American governors for three hun- 
dred years. Santa Fe is the second oldest city in 
the United States, being antedated by a few years 
by St. Augustine, Florida. 



Gentlemen of the Press 

ONE OF the things that cannot be avoided 
by a man whose work is subject to public 
notice is being interviewed by reporters, 
and of this I have naturally had my full share. Of 
course it is natural that local papers are keen to 
print things which intimately affect the affairs of 
their communities, and my passage through their 
section would generally be regarded as live news 
and frequently featured with display headings, the 
importance of the "dope" usually varying with the 
size of the town in which the paper was published. 

Generally speaking, I have found the gentlemen 
of the press keen, well posted and educated men, 
who would present the facts as related to them with, 
of course, their own view on how far these would 
have a bearing on local affairs. 

Having arrived at one of the larger cities of the 
southwest a few years ago I was, as a matter of 
course, called on by representatives of the several 
local newspapers. After dictating to them a state- 
ment of the facts in connection with my trip through 
their section of the country on that particular occa- 
sion, I requested that care be used in quoting me 
literally. In justice to them I will say that this 
was done, but some of them could not refrain from 
giving expression to their impression of my per- 
sonality. Thus one would describe me as burned 
by the desert heat till my face was the color of an 
old cavalry saddle, but my eyes were clear and 
kindly, besides which I had the warm hand clasp 
of a true friend. These compliments were, of 

197 




upon arriv'uKj at Los Angeles, after surveying three 
transcontinental motor routes for the American Auto- 
mobile Association in 1912, it seemed mighty good to re- 
ceive a stack of letters from friends back home 



course, very nice and much appreciated. But to 
offset them another said that I was a highwayman 
whose deeds were known throughout the land, and 
still another made the assertion that almost every 
city in the west was looking for me. 

Evidently someone had called the attention of 
the reporter who called me a highwayman to the 
possibility of a double interpretation of the name 
he had bestowed on me with such good intentions. 
At any rate he referred to the matter in a paragraph 
the following day, in which he said that, of course, 
everybody knew that I was not a highwayman in 
the wrong sense of that term, but that I was a road 
agent. 



Bad Intentions 

IN SPITE of my long rambles on rubber tires 
throughout the United States, very frequently 
into remote regions reputed to be the hide-outs 
of renegades, into desolate areas only visited by 
nomadic Indian tribes or into lands where only 
negroes inhabit vast swampy tracts, or sections 
where only Mexicans dwell, I have never been 
molested or even seen the sign of a suspicious desire 
to get unduly acquainted with my outfit except on 
one solitary occasion and that, as may be easily real- 
ized by those who have roamed the great out-of- 
doors, occurred in a city, the safe breeding place 
for crimes and criminals. 

While we were stopping for a day and a night at 
a well-known hotel in one of the larger central west 
cities, my wife had occasion to have a check for 
several hundred dollars cashed, and used the money 
that day in a business transaction. When we were 
ready to pull away from in front of the hotel the 
next morning a young fellow with the appearance 
of a mechanic, came up to the car and presented 
himself as being the "trouble-man" or road mechanic 
from the factory which manufactured the particular 
car which I was using that season. He wanted to 
know if the car was functioning all right in every 
respect. If not, he would be glad to make adjust- 
ments and fix anything which might be wrong with 
it. It so happened that the car had been losing 
power and needed carburetor adjustment, and I told 
him to go ahead and fix it. He claimed that as he 
was going on to our next town anyway, probably he 

199 



200 BAD INTENTIONS 

had better ride over with us and thus be able to 
make the adjustments while the car was in actual 
operation. As this was unquestionably the best way 
to have the adjustment made, we managed to make 
room for him in the tonneau seat alongside my wife. 

A few miles out I invited him to drive the car 
for awhile so he could get "the feel" of it, and thus 
better determine the exact nature of the trouble to 
be corrected inasmuch as, of course, he was so spe- 
cially well acquainted with this make of car. How- 
ever, he did not accept the invitation, claiming he 
could "listen to the motor" better if not at the 
wheel. This aroused my suspicion to some extent, 
especially as he showed a lack of knowledge of the 
factory where the car was made, and acquaintance 
with the officers and heads of departments of the 
organization manufacturing it. My wife's suspicion 
was also aroused, and she made a point of explain- 
ing to me in the hearing of the stranger just how 
she had disposed of the money she had drawn the 
previous day. Her story, coupled with my getting 
my rifle unlimbered, ostensibly in order to be ready 
for any prowling coyote, evidently had the desired 
effect, because when we reached the trolley line on 
the outskirts of the next town the "mechanic" said 
he w^ould take the electric car, and on his way in call 
at a certain garage, where he had an appointment to 
call, but would meet us at Jones & Smith's estab- 
lishment, the agents for our make of car, and there 
make adjustment on our carburetor, as parts were 
available there. 

As we expected there was no Jones & Smith in 
the town, nor was our make of car handled in that 
community by anyone. 



The Sandstorm 

IN SEVERAL sections of the southwest, where 
the annual precipitation is very light and where 
strong winds have for ages corroded rocks, 
cliffs and veritable mountains, there are large areas 
of sandy wastes. When an unusually strong and 
protracted gale prevails during the period of a long 
drought, the sand is swept up by the strong air cur- 
rent and carried along with it, sometimes for a great 
many miles. This phenomenon is what is called a 
sandstorm. At times these become more than 
annoying, even positively dangerous as the sand- 
laden air darkens the sky and like a heavy fog makes 
objects, only a short distance away, invisible. Not 
only does such a storm fill one's eyes and throat with 
its gritty particles, but it will sometimes entirely 
obliterate a trail or a road, making it difficult for 
one to trace one's route, besides making progress on 
rubber tires exceedingly arduous, if not entirely im- 
possible. 

People who have had occasion to travel between 
El Paso and Alamogordo in New Mexico, or be- 
tween Mecca and Brawley in the Salton Sea basin 
of California during or after a sandstorm, will easily 
recognize this description. Residents around River- 
side and San Bernardino, California, are often much 
annoyed by dark sandstorms coming over the moun- 
tains from the Mohave Desert, and so frequently 
are dwellers along the foothills of the Rocky Moun- 
tains in southern Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon 
and Idaho. 

The arid region of the Navaho and Hopi Indian 

201 



202 



THE SANDSTORM 



reservations in Arizona are especially subject to 
sandstorms. The white sands or shifting gypsum 
beds north of El Paso are as unstable as the drifts 
along the North Carolina coasts. The yellow sand- 
beds in the Imperial Valley of California along the 
Southern Pacific railroad are continuously encroach- 
ing on the railroad track burying telegraph poles, 
and every few years necessitate the moving of the 
track further east. 

On one occasion when in the neighborhood of 
Walsenburg on the way from Denver to Trinidad, 
Colorado, we encountered one of these storms of an 
unusual severity. Our eyes, nostrils and throats 
soon became so inflamed that we had to cover our 
faces with handkerchiefs and stop the car, awaiting 
the abatement of the gale. When this occurred, 



SiM^fT^^^' ^^^ 




These tracks of the pathfinder's car shoiv the difficulty 
often encountered ivhen tra'versing the sands of tJte 
Painted Desert on the ivay to the Hopi Indian pueblos in 
Arizona. The ivinds cause the formation of ripples like 
tiny ivaves of ivater 



THE SANDSTORM 203 

after a lapse of a few hours, our car was embedded 
in sand to the hubs, our motor and inside of the 
tonneau literally covered with sand, and the road 
entirely obliterated. During the thickest part of 
the storm it was impossible to see a car-length in 
any direction, and when I left the car to investigate 
the condition of the ground ahead, I had to shout 
loudly in order to have the answering cries guide 
me back, though I was not more than a hundred feet 
away. It took us an entire day to shovel our way 
clear of the drifted area, in the very center of which 
we occupied a position like an island in an ocean. 



D 



Sniping Grin goes 

URING the turbulent conditions in Mexico 
in the years following the downfall of 
President Porfirio Diaz, the iron-willed dic- 
tator who had held the many disturbing elements in 
leash for more than thirty years, and brought our 
neighboring republic a measure of prosperity which 
upset its equilibrium, the borders along Arizona, 
New Mexico and Texas were subjected to raids by 
the marauding bands of various "revolutionary 
leaders." These raids were either instigated by 
bandit chiefs like Villa, for mere plunder, or by 
unscrupulous military or political chiefs who were 
anxious to bring trouble on Madero or Carranza by 
having the United States step in and put a stop to 
these practices. 

Pershing's campaign in Mexico was caused by 
such a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and occa- 
sional punitive expeditions were made by our 
cavalry, crossing the Rio Grande from Texas into 
Chihuahua in pursuit of raiders, who had harrassed 
the Texas border, stealing cattle and occasionally 
murdering ranchers. At this time I was traveling 
along the border of Texas to inspect a possible route 
for a proposed highway paralleling the Rio Grande. 

While following a poor road between Del Rio 
and Eagle Pass, skirting the river very closely and 
being flanked on the north by a chain of low hills, 
we heard a rifle shot across on the Mexican side of 
the river but, as w^e discovered no one in sight among 
the trees on the other bank, we did not concern our- 
selves much with the occurrence. How^ever, in a 
204 



SNIPING GRINGOES 205 

few moments another shot sounded, and this time 
I heard the bullet hit a nearby sandbank with a 
thud and then first realized that we were the targets, 
and that someone was trying to snipe us. We 
speeded up and drove away at our best clip, pur- 
sued by a few more shots which, owing to too great 
a range or too poor markmanship, failed to reach us. 
On this trip we encountered every few miles one 
of our border patrols who would stop us and 
search our car for arms and ammunition, as quan- 
tities of these were suspected of being surreptitiously 
smuggled across the border by innocent-appearing 
motor-car travelers. Further down the river we 
found ranch houses being prepared for trouble by 
having machine guns mounted on the roofs of build- 
ings and by the posting of sentries. The trouble was 
not only with the Mexicans who crossed the Rio 
Grande, but also to some extent with the great popu- 
lation of native Texas Mexicans, who vastly pre- 
dominate in all the counties which border on the 
Rio Grande. These people are mostly ignorant and 
were easily led to believe through insidious propa- 
ganda, that their motherland was powerful enough 
to again gather Texas into its fold as one of its 
provinces, a situation which existed previous to 
1836, when the Mexican province of Texas revolted 
and became the republic of Texas, which later, in 
1845, joined the United States. 



The Padre Typographers 

AT ST. MICHAELS, ARIZONA, is located 
a San Franciscan mission, in charge of four 
^ padres, attended by a lay brother. This 
mission has been established only a few years and 
maintains chapels at three places on the Navaho 
Indian reservation. Nearby is a Catholic Indian 
school, maintained by Mother Katharine Dexel, and 
attended by boys and girls from several Indian 
tribes. 

Father Berard and Father Weber of the mission, 
have taken great pains in learning the Navaho lan- 
guage, and have reduced it to printed form, an 
enormously difficult task on account of the numerous 
diphthongs and compound sounds of the language. 
A person listening to the Navaho, and the affiliated 
Apache language spoken by one of the tribe, would 
be apt to describe it as a series of hisses and bitten- 
off consonants that could get no further than the 
teeth, labial sounds being conspicuous by their 
paucity. 

These painstaking, patient padres studied the 
language for some years and devised special type to 
represent some of the otherwise unprintable sounds. 
By elimination they finally succeeded in bringing 
out an alphabet which has only forty odd letters 
and, after having fonts of type prepared from their 
own patterns of those letters differing from or be- 
ing additional to the English alphabet, proceeded to 
erect their own printshop. Here were printed on 
hand-and-foot power presses the first books in the 
206 



THE PADRE TYPOGRAPHERS 



207 



Navaho tongue. They were the cathecism and a 
dictionary. 

These constitute a real achievement and a monu- 
ment to the devotion to a cause by these men of the 
church. As their work had to be pursued by means 
of private contributions, their enormous task was 
accomplished in slow stages and with the greatest 
self-abnegation. Among the most prized mementoes 
of my travels is a copy of the cathecism in Navaho, 
presented to me by the padres on my first trip into 
the Navaho country. 




The blending of the old and neiv. The first transcon- 

tinentnl truck, at the ancient Pecos mission ruins in 

Neiv Mexico 



Texas The Great 

4 S A YOUNG man I lived for some ten years 
AA in the state of Texas. After leaving the 
-^ -^ state twenty-two j^ears elapsed before I 
again visited the scenes of my early youth, and what 
a transformation had in the meantime taken place! 
I doubt if any other state in the Union can show an 
equal measure of growth and forward strides in a 
steady march of progress. 

In addition to being the biggest of our states in 
point of area and cross-dimensions, it had grown 
to be the greatest in many other respects. Thus I 
found on the Gulf coast the greatest business farm 
in the country, and probably in the world, the Taft 
Farm, comprising some sixty thousand acres, all in 
cultivation and divided into units of about two hun- 
dred acres each, under the supervision of a respon- 
sible manager and each having its substantial barn, 
manager's dwelling and houses for the Mexican 
laborers. In addition there are three good-sized 
towns and a private packing plant on the property. 
Diversified farming is pursued and a wonderful herd 
of registered shorthorns is maintained. The prop- 
erty is located near Corpus Christi and was seriously 
damaged in the terrible tropical tornado which swept 
over this region in the fall of 1919. 

Near Kingville is the ranch of the King family. 
This ranch contains about a million acres on which 
are some eighty thousand head of Hereford or 
White-face cattle. The home ranch is a veritable 
mansion of white marble and would be a con- 
spicuous estate in the Wheatley Hills of Long 
208 



TEXAS THE GREAT 



209 




When pathfinding one must of course not expect smooth 
going all the time 



Island, New York, where are located so many mag- 
nificent homes of financial kings. 

Not far away is the little town of Falfurias. 
Here is located the hundred thousand acre property 
called the Lasater dairy ranch. The largest herd of 
registered Jersey cattle in the world is to be found 
on this ranch. It comprises twenty-five hundred 
registered animals, of which nine hundred are milch 
cows kept in dairies, one hundred to each unit. 
Prize-winning aristocrats of this particular breed of 
bovines are here. Cows who have produced an 
enormous weight of butter in pounds per annum, 
bulls, heifers and calves, blue-ribboned and groomed 
like race horses. 

Down at Laredo, on the Rio Grande, is the 
largest Bermuda onion farm in the country, the 
Dodd farm. This comprises over five hundred acres 
devoted exclusivelv to tlic raising of onions. 



210 TEXAS THE GREAT 

At Juno is located the Murrah ranch where 
seventeen thousand Angora goats are making their 
owner a fortune each year. Before the introduction 
of these goats into that country, the land was dear 
at twenty-five cents an acre, as it was arid ground 
and over-grown by a species of cactus, the sutol. It 
was discovered that this cactus, whose interior fibre, 
near the roots, is like succulent cabbage leaves, is a 
favorite food of the goats and the land values have 
risen to five dollars an acre in that region. 

Near Austin are located the largest spinach farms 
in the world and also a large tract where mulberry 
trees are grown for the successful culture of the silk 
worm. 

When Texas entered the Union of States, in 
1845, it was stipulated that all public lands should 
remain the property of the state and not, as in other 
states, become the domain of the federal govern- 




Our cars did not alivays cross Texas streams as easily 
as a floating chip. No, not alivays 



TEXAS THE GREAT 



211 




^^^-^5 



Visiting one of the Texas oilfields, the pathfinder's car 
stopping at the location of the original spouter 

ment. The proceeds from the sale of these millions 
of acres of public lands have for years been devoted 
to building and maintaining the finest system of 
schools and educational institutions in the country, 
and this wonderful work of placing the means of 
an education at the disposal of and within the reach 
of all its citizens is conspicuously evidenced by the 
rapid transformation of a wild-and-woolly frontier 
state to one of our most progressive and prosperous 
commonwealths. 

Texas is also our largest cotton producing state, 
and has become the richest state of all in producing 
oil fields. Its cattle industry is enormous, and even 
its lumber industry is of vast dimensions. The 
state is dotted with modern prosperous cities and 
is fast building for itself a system of permanent 
highways which will eventually prove one of its 
most valuable assets. 



A Tight Squeeze 

THE road which now ascends from the Rio 
Grande valley at Socorro, New Mexico, and 
comprises part of the National Old Trails 
Route through the Blue Canyon up to Magdalena 
Plain, is of comparatively recent construction. The 
first time I was investigating this route in that 
locality we were compelled to make our way 
through the narrow and steep Lemitar Canyon, a 
few miles further north. At the time we were 
traveling in a large truck and found at several 
places that outjutting portions of the precipitous 
cliffs which formed the walls of the canyon would 
not allow for the passage of our large vehicle. 

At times we were able to remove a few inches 
of these projections by the use of a pick, and at other 
times we were compelled to resort to the expediency 
of piling rocks near the foot of the cliff, where a 
projection occurred in order to tilt the top of the 
truck away from the obstruction as we squeezed 
through "by the skin of our teeth." However at 
one place we encountered a situation that called for 
a great amount of patience and arduous w^ork. Pro- 
jections occurred on the rocky walls on both sides 
just opposite each other, and some ten feet above the 
ground. The narrow space betw^een these projec- 
tions lacked a whole foot of allowing us space to 
pass through. By standing on the front fenders and 
pecking away at the hard granite boulders for sev- 
eral hours, working the pick above our heads, we 
eventually succeeded in getting through. It is 
212 



A TIGHT SQUEEZE 



213 



doubtful if any of us will ever forget the numb 
;irms and dizzy heads this work caused us, even 
though we worked in relays. 




In past years, be j ore bridges and adverts crossed the 

arroyos of N eiv Mexico, pathfinding entailed many a 

strenuous stun' in the effort to attain the other bank of 

these steep and generally sandy ravines 



APPENDIX 

The Author wishes to express his deep 
appreciation of the generous coopera- 
tion of his friends whose announce- 
ments appear on the following pages. 




STUDEBAKER AUTOMOBILES 
contain none but the finest ma- 
terials, such as the best known 
grades of steel, leather, upholstery, 
finishing paints, tires and accessories. 
Studebaker's reputation, maintained 
throughout 68 years of business suc- 
cess, precludes the building of cheap 
cars or the making of substitutions 
to lower costs. 



STUDEBAKER 

Detroit, Mich. South Bend, Ind. 

Walkerville, Canada 

Address all correspondence to South Bend 




Mr. n e>lfi,Uil. uulho, o/ lal,-^ <./ ,/ I'alliJiiuU'i, ' sr.ure.l (,2,000 miles from his 'A'OCBi'" Treads in 1914 




^^ J he success of any 
Cx tour depends 
largely on tires that 
give good dependable 
service right up to the 
end of the final mile. 

United States Tires 
are Good Tires 

'Royal Cord' 'Nobby' 'Chain' 
'Usco' and 'Plain' 






;|r 



m 



m 



THERE'S A TOUCH OF TOMORROW 
IN ALL COLE DOES TODAY 



nPHE economy of the cAero- 
-*- Eight, its easy riding quali- 
ties, its quick pickup, its tena- 
cious road adherence and general 
efficiency,inall,may be attributed 
largely to the perfect balance 
created by its aerotype construc- 
tion. The car rides the road 
with the same even keel that 
the aeroplane maintains 
in flight 



COLE MOTOR CAR COMPANY 

Creators cfcAdvanced <^otor Qars 

INDIANAPOLIS, U.S.A. 



\Wj', 



A^ 





This is What a Skid Does ! 

It actually grinds away the tire's tread — stretches and weak- 
ens the fabric— causes inevitable punctures and blowouts. 
Every time you skid you grind off miles and miles of tire ser- 
vice and no matter how careful a driver you may be, when 
roads are wet and slippery it is next to impossible to avoid 
skidding unless your tires are equipped with 

Weed Anti-Skid Chains 

For Protection and Preservation 

Weed Chains insure safety, economy and tire protection— 
Always put them on "At the First Drop of Rain," ^^' 

AMERICAN CH AIN C OMPANY, INC. /A 

\ A C / ^^ 

BRIDGEPORT \V/ CONNECTICUT 
Largest Chain Manufacturers in the World 





An Applied Ideal 



"Every great enterprise is but the lengthened 
shadow of a man." ^ Another way to say the 
same thing is, *'The quality of any product truly 
reflects the character of the men who make that 
product." ^ We accept that axiom on behalf of 
the Reo product and of the Reo organization. 
q Reo is one of the largest concerns in the motor 
car industry. ^ But Reo has never been ambitious 
to be the largest. ^ Reo never will contend for 
that doubtful distinction. ^ From the very in- 
ception of this concern it has been our ambition, 
our purpose and our policy to build, not the most 
—but the best. ^ It was resolved then that Reo 
never would build more motor cars than we could 
build and be sure that every Reo would be as good 
as the best Reo that ever came from these plants. 
q To that policy v;e have always rigidly adhered. 
q Your approval of the Reo product— expressed in 
the over-demand Reo motor cars and motor trucks 
have always enjoyed— encourages us to believe that 
you fully approve that policy, fl Not the most, 
but the best— the precept crystallized in the product 
—the ideal practically applied, q In the beginning 
of this, the seventeenth year of Reo, we thank you 
most heartily for your patronage in the past; and 
we assure you that, since the same executives will 
continue to control Reo, the same policy will obtain. 

Reo Motor Car Co., Lansing, Michigan 



"^Re Most Beautiful Car in/lmerlca 

Hundreds of sportsmen have learned to include tlie 
Paige motor car as a "standard equipment" when 
planning their excursions back to nature. 

They have found that the Paige is a splendid com- 
panion on the trail — eager and Avilling to travel 
wherever there is traction for four Avheels — blessed 
Avith the stamina that laughs at hard going. 

This car, they have concluded, "belongs" to that 
select little company of tried and proven thorough- 
breds. It has all the flexibility of a finely balanced 
casting rod — the po\ver of an express rifle — the 
speed of a Mallard — the aggressive, fighting spirit of 
a three-pound brook trout. 

And because of these attributes, the Paige is trusted 
and respected as a fine mechanical product the 
world over. 

PAIGE-DETROIT MOTOR CAR COMPANY 

DETROIT, MICHIGAN 







.'i 




,V'J 






^1^^ 


* ""'"''.aBXfC'* 




^^^1^ 






1. 





*^*.-^ 



FROM coast to coast 
— wherever men 
travel in motor cars 
you will find written 
in the familiar pattern 
of the Goodyear All 
Weather Tread this 
impressive story: 

More people ride on 
Goodyear Tires than 
on any other kind. 



M. 




1 



J4,000 Miles On One 
Jet of Firestojne Tiies 



fc.' 






THIS photograph shows Mr. A. L. 
Westward in his car mounted on 
Firestone Tires — the identical set 
which gave 34,000 miles of service. 

And s?ick service! During Mr. West- 
ward's "pathfinding" work of the past 
15 years he has gone through the most 
strenuous and hazardous tests of road 
and trail. 




flre^fone 




STCOTT 



(f ^ms'wMIk 




AUTOMOBILE construction becomes every 
year more nearly standardized. But at 
no time will ideals of quality become so 
generally practiced but that the extra care and 
forethought put into Westcott cars will show — 
in the form of longer life and more solid satis- 
faction during every year of that long life! 



THE WESTCOTT MOTOR CAR COMPANY 

Springfield, Ohio 



IN REVIEWING 

"Through the Land of Yesterday ' 

OUR GLORIOUS SOUTHWEST 

By A. L. Westgard 
JOHN % EUSTIS says: 

"Whether one is a motor tourist or is primarily a student with an insati- 
ate appetite for things historical, archaelogical, agricultural, industrial and so 
on, A. L. Westgard's book, "Through the Land of Yesterday," will prove 
of intrinsic interest and value. It deals specially with the Indian tribes of 
our great Southwest, including not only those on the reservations but also 
those of the twenty-six self-governing republics of the Pueblo tribes. 

In his book Mr. Westgard produces a rare combination of practical 
advice and suggestions for the traveler, especially the motor tourist, with 
a wealth of information pertaining to a corner of this great country of 
which little is known by a majority of our people. 

Detailed within this book are accurate and interesting descriptions of 
the houses, customs, language, costumes, food, industries, history, tradi- 
tions, pagan religion and sacred ceremonies of all the tribes. The climate, 
physical character of country, scenery, prehistoric ruins, cave-dwellings, 
gorgeous coloring, different races of people, desert vegetation, animal life, 
living and petrified forests, mountains and plateaus, fishing, hunting and 
camping. 

After reading this book one need not be told that the author has had 
perhaps an unequalled opportunity to study and to learn at first-hand his 
subject. 

Within its covers "Through the Land of Yesterday" contains material 
that to secure otherwise one would have to virtually browse through an 
entire library." 



Endorsed officially by the Governors of Arizona and New Mexico. 

Profusely illustrated with halftones, pen-and-ink sketches and 

maps. Printed on fine paper and handsomely bound. 

PRICE TWO DOLLARS 

From your bookseller or direct from 

A. L. Westgard / / 501 Fifth Avenue, New York 



DISTINGUISHED SERVICE 



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GENEFLAL MOTORS COF!J>ORATIOT^ 



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OFFICIAL 



^JiV 



MANUAL OF 



Motor Car Camping 

"By 
A. L. WESTGARD 

Field Representative 

1>ublished by 

AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION 

Riggs Building, Washington, D. C. 

501 Fifth Ave., New York 



Contents 



Introduction 
Car Equipment 
Camp Equipment 
Camping Clothes 
The Commissary 
Selecting the Camp Site 
Pitching Camp 
The Camp Fire 
Camp Sanitation 



Camp Cooking 

Breaking Camp 

The Medicine Kit 

Health Hints Worth Heedinj 

Things Worth Knowing 

Conclusion 

National Parks 

National Forests 

State Game Regulations 



ILLUSTRATED 



HANDY POCKET SIZE 



Price to Non-members of A. A. A. 
FIFTY CENTS 




J'ORDANo^'^^^ 



THE Silhouette is simply a frank ex- 
pression of another Jordan ideal — a 
determination to meet the demand for a 
high-grade car, perfectly balanced, com- 
fortable, economical, and yet light in weight, 
compact, and with rare ability to perform. 

After all, the building toward an ideal 
has been the keynote of Jordan popularity. 

Both men and women who have natural 
appreciation for comfort, poise and atmo- 
sphere, have found this Jordan Silhouette 
irresistible in its symmetry of line and 
beauty of color. 

The chassis, of finished mechanical ex- 
cellence, is the lightest on the road for its 
wheelbase. This Silhouette weighs only 
2,800 pounds. Its entire movement is for- 
ward. No racking sideway or continuous 
bouncing so conspicuous in the cars of yes- 
terday. 

No wonder the Jordan has found such 
instant favor cmiong the motor wise. 




JORDAN MOTOR CAR COMPANY, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio 




Do you want good roads 
Do you want uniform laws 
Do you want correct 
touring information ? 

Yourmtmbership counts 



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American Automobile 
Association 

Washington, D. C, Riggs Building 
New York, 501 Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street 




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rente 



From year to year, the greater 
durability, comfort and econ- 
omy of Goodrich Silvertown 
Cord Tires have multiplied 
their use, and intensified their 
popularity. 

It was the pioneer service of Silver- 
towns, the original cord tires, that 
raised the cord tire to its place of 
honor. 

Patricians in look, yeomen for work, 
Silvcrtowns carry you to the su- 
preme height of satisfartion. 



The Creed of Goodrich 

Whatever is right for a responsible manufacturer to give 
the customer. The B. F. Goodrich Rubber Company gives. 

To do what is right is not a Goodrich policy; it is The 
Goodrich Creed. It is fundatnentaL 

It is the foundation on which the great Goodrich institu* 
tion has been built. 

The Creed of Goodrich serves you, whether you buy a 
sturdy, dependable Goodrich Fabric Tire, or the tire of 
tires, the Silvertown Cord. 

The Goodrich Adjustment Basis: Fabric Tires, 
6,000 MiJes, Silvertoum Cords. 8000 Miles. 

Goodrich Tires 



FOUNDCO iB«a 




oeakin^ of 

ONCRETE ROADS 
FREETS and ALLEYS 

53,000.000 Square YarJs 

Were Placed Under 
Contract During 1919 — 

More tKan twice tKe total of any previ- 
ous year, ana equivalent to over 5,000 
miles of 18-foot concrete pavement. 

Every state — your state — contributca to 
tKis wonderful record. Watck 1920! 



States in Wlitcli Contracts for Tylore than 30 
Miles of Concrete RoaJ Were Let During 1919 



ArkaoM* 

Calitoinia 

Delaware 

Georgia 

Illinoi) 

Indiana 

Kansas 

MaryUnci 

Ma99acKu*ett* 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Ml*5l9»lppi 



87 

210 

53 

90 

570 

280 

(,9 

95 

31 

169 

79 

38 



Jertey 
York 



New 
New 

OK.O . . . 

OklaKoma 

Oregon 

Pennaytvanu 

Texaj 

UtaL . . . 

Virginia . . 

Watbington 

NVett Vtrgini* 

Wwcoimn 



87 

329 

239 

f>9 

42 

491 

59 

84 

91 

161 

87 

132 



NortK, east, south and w^est — 

CONCRETE is tKe cKoice. 



PORTLAND CEMENT ASSOCIATION 



Detroit 
Heler.a 
Indianapolis 
K*n>«>Cily 
U>» Angel«» 



5«lt Ukc C)cy 



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Wheel tracks of the 
Author's Motor Car 



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